Cité de Carcassonne

The Cité de Carcassonne is the most complete fortified medieval town in Europe — a hilltop enclosed by two concentric rings of walls, about 3 km in total, punctuated by 52 towers, on the right bank of the Aude above the modern city. UNESCO inscribed it in 1997 as an exceptional example of a medieval fortress town, and also for the way it was saved in the 19th century.

The site has around 2,500 years of history. A Gaulish settlement became a Roman fortified town, with walls in place by 333 AD and some three dozen semicircular towers, and the Visigoths rebuilt those defences in the 5th and 6th centuries. In the 12th century the Trencavel viscounts made Carcassonne a prosperous seat, built the castle and completed the ring of walls. Their lands were at the heart of the Cathar movement, and on 1 August 1209 the crusaders of the Albigensian Crusade laid siege; Raimond-Roger Trencavel surrendered within two weeks and died of dysentery that November. After 1226 the town passed to the French crown, which added a second, outer line of walls and rebuilt the inner one, turning Carcassonne into a frontier fortress facing the Crown of Aragon. When the border moved south with the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659, the Cité lost its purpose.

In 1849 the government decided to demolish the fortifications. A local campaign led by Jean-Pierre Cros-Mayrevieille and the writer Prosper Mérimée reversed the decision, and from 1853 the architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc restored the walls, work continued after his death in 1879 by his pupil Paul Boeswillwald. The restoration is itself part of the story: critics then and since have pointed out that Viollet-le-Duc's pointed slate roofs belong to northern France rather than Languedoc, where tiles were the norm. Visitors today can walk the ramparts, enter the Château Comtal with its barbican and moat, and see the Basilica of Saint-Nazaire; a local legend tells how Dame Carcas tricked Charlemagne's army into lifting a siege by throwing a well-fed pig from the walls — the tale is told as the origin of the city's name.

Getting there

The Cité stands on a hill about 1.7 km from the centre of modern Carcassonne and its lower town, the Bastide Saint-Louis. Carcassonne Salvaza Airport (CCF) is about 5 km away; the nearest major airport is Toulouse–Blagnac, roughly 105 km to the northwest. The Gare de Carcassonne has direct trains to Toulouse, Narbonne, Perpignan, Marseille and Paris, and the A61 motorway passes the city.