MILLAU  , a

town of southern France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Aveyron, on the right bank of the Tarn at its confluence with the Dourbie, 74 M . N. of Beziers on the Southern railway . Pop . (1906), 16,853 . Millau lies in a rich valley 1 200 ft. above the sea surrounded by the spurs of the Levezou, Causse Noir and Larzac ranges . The streets are narrow and some of the houses of great antiquity, but the town is surrounded by spacious boulevards . One of its squares is bordered on two sides by wooden galleries supported on stone columns . The only buildings of special interest are the Romanesque church of Notre Dame, restored in the 16th century, and the fine Gothic belfry of the old hotel de ville . Millau is seat of a sub-prefect, and possesses tribunals of first instance and of commerce, a board of trade-arbitrators, a chamber of commerce and a communal college . The principal industry is the manufacture of gloves, and various branches of the leather industry are carried on . The chief articles of trade are skins, wool, wine and Roquefort cheese . In the middle ages Millau was the seat of a viscounty held by the counts of Barcelona and afterwards by the counts of Armagnac .

In the 16th century it became one of the leading strongholds of Calvinism in southern France . In 162o it revolted against

Louis XIII., and after its submission Richelieu caused its fortifications to be dismantled . The edict of Nantes hastened the decline of the town, which did not recover its prosperity till after the Revolution .