Montpellier is well placed for day trips in every direction. Nîmes, half an hour east by train, has the best-preserved Roman amphitheatre in France and the Maison Carrée temple. Sète, twenty minutes south on the coast, is a working fishing port crisscrossed by canals — the Mont Saint-Clair viewpoint is worth the climb. Aigues-Mortes, a perfectly preserved 13th-century walled town surrounded by salt pans, sits at the edge of the Camargue with its pink flamingos and white horses.
Inland, Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert is a medieval village pinned to a rocky gorge with a UNESCO-listed abbey — combine it with a swim under the Pont du Diable in the Hérault river. Pézenas was Molière's old stamping ground and still has the air of a 17th-century theatre town. Wine drinkers should head north into the Pic Saint-Loup appellation; beach-seekers, south to Palavas-les-Flots or the giant 1960s pyramids of La Grande-Motte.