Tarasque

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Fibreglass Tarasque in Tarascon

Rear view

——Tarascon, during the June celebrations

The Tarasque is a creature from French mythology. According to the Golden Legend, the beast had a lion-like head, a body protected by turtle-like carapace(s), six feet with bear-like claws, a serpent's tail, and could expel a poisonous breath.

Medieval iconography such as renditions in church sculpture did not necessarily conform to this description in the earlier Gothic period, and examples which seemed to were later assigned later, 14th century dates. The six-footed, turtle-shelled tarasque was the form depicted on the city seal of Tarascon around the 15th century, and this held to be the norm in 16th- and 17th-century paintings. As St. Martha purportedly encountered the beast in the act of swallowing a human victim, it has become a stock motif in art to portray the monster swallowing a human head first, with the victim's legs still dangling.

According to tradition, in 1474, René of Anjou initiated the use of the tarasque in the Pentecostal festival, and later used also on the saint's feast day of July 29. Yearly celebration in the last weekend of June was added in the modern day. The effigy or float (French: char) of the tarasque has been built over the years for parading through town for the occasion, carried by four to a dozen men concealed inside.

The Tarasque was designated one of "Processional Giants and Dragons in Belgium and France" listed in November 2005 as part of UNESCO's Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity.^[1][2]