How is a city born ?

(This article is a translation of the one I've wrote in january of 23)

If someone asks you how Rome was founded, you’ll probably answer with that beautiful tale of a Trojan refugee, two wolf-loving and fratricidal twins, and divine destiny. But if you stop to think about it, the story of Romulus and Remus can only be a legend. And if you’re immediately asked again how Rome really began… well, you might suddenly feel a bit silly.

The true story involves Etruscan, Latin, and Sabine villages gradually coming together over time, mingling and merging into a single entity. Its name likely comes from a local fertility deity linked to fig trees (yes, really). It's a story built from archaeological evidence, full of uncertainty and doubt. Legends are simpler, more exciting, more epic — and for Romans at the end of the Republic and the start of the Empire (when the Romulus & Remus story became popular), far more unifying.Myths and legends often serve as the glue of local or national identity.

And in Montpellier? Well, we don’t really have a founding myth. Not quite.But… we do have a birth certificate.

Montepestolario appears in History

Montpellier was officially born on November 26th, 985 — which makes it a Sagittarius, first decan (though I have no idea what that tells us, really).

At the time, our "mount" (a hill 60 meters above sea level, which we proudly call a mont, got a problem with that?) held nothing but a manse — that is, a large agricultural estate or farm.(The word manse later gave rise to maison in French, and here in the south, mas.)

That date comes from a document — a deed of donation, in which Count Bernard II of Melgueil and his wife Senegonde (I love medieval names) reward a knight named Guilhem (or Guy) for his loyal service by giving him the manse that would become Montpellier.In the document, it’s called Montepestelario.

Guilhem, that mysterious and solitary knight, thus became the founder and first lord of Montpellier — the forefather of the Guilhem dynasty, which would rule the city until 1204.

Of course, there’s always a touch of legend — because Guilhem, as it turns out, came from an already powerful and well-established family with ties to the Carolingians. This so-called “gift” probably followed negotiations we know nothing about, part of a larger local geopolitical game.

But still — in terms of legendary flair, we’re not quite at the level of those Roman twins, are we?

Once upon a time… in Poitou

There’s a tiny village in western France called Pougne-Hérisson — really tiny — that one day declared itself the navel of the world, the birthplace of every story ever told, born from a kind of mythological Big Bang.

And what does that have to do with anything?

Well, it made me want to do the same. Like great Livy, or like Pougne-Hérisson, I wanted to craft a founding myth for Montpellier — one from which a whole world of legends could bloom, where each stone in the city holds a tale.

A not-so-humble dream

My (not-at-all-humble) dream is that people will one day play along when I tell this myth — that they’ll believe in it just enough to start telling it themselves.And if enough people tell it, for long enough — adding details, removing others, inventing variations as all real legends do — maybe one day it will become… official, in a way.

My wildest hope? That someone who’s never even taken one of my tours will say to me:"Oh yes, Montpellier — that’s the city of Saunia, the Daughter of Dreams!"

That’s the heart of the Taliesin project: midwifing stories into the world, starting from the founding myth of Saunia, daughter of Guilhem, who tirelessly tells stories to Arquinel, the nightmare Drac who sleeps beneath the Peyrou — to make sure he never wakes.

That’s how I became an Arconteur — a street-wandering storyteller (and I’ll never thank Mr. Alexandre Dulac enough for inventing that word).Through legends, I guide people to discover and fall in love with Montpellier. And the most beautiful compliment I can receive at the end of a tour is simply:

"Now, I really love this place, and it would be cool to live and belong here."