The jousts and traditional festivals

The traditional festivals punctuate the activities : local festivals and their totemic animals, floral processions, mussel barbecues, fishermen's festivals, tambourine ball games...
The jousting tournaments are a sport rooted in local identity. They are part of this traditional heritage, as Agde is the historical cradle of the Languedoc jousts.

They originate in Antiquity. Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, each in their turn, organised these spectacles which were imitations of naval combats.

The first Languedoc jousts were held at Agde for the arrival of the Duke of Montmorency. The oldest document concerning them is a deliberation of the institutions of Agde dated from the last day of May 1601. They were the occasion for major popular festivities, with the music of trumpets, tambours and hoboes.

Fishermen or sailors attached to their land, farmers with one foot in the sea, the people of Agde have always celebrated the summer festivals on the Hérault : the married men's boat versus the young men's boat, which have since become the "red" and the "blue".

Nowadays, the jousters, nicknamed knights of the tintaine (from the name of their boat's platform), oppose each other all dressed in white in these duels reminiscent of medieval knightly tournaments.

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