Seen from the road, the Cité de Carcassonne hardly looks real — a double ring of ramparts and fifty-two pepper-pot towers crowning a hill above the Aude, the largest walled city in Europe. It is a fortress out of a storybook, and for once the storybook is telling something close to the truth.
I. The double walls
Two full circuits of wall ring the city, with a wide grassy lists between them where you can walk the whole way round. Inside, narrow lanes lead to the Château Comtal, a castle within the castle, and the Basilique Saint-Nazaire with its medieval glass. The walls go back to Rome and the Visigoths; the silhouette is medieval, and unforgettable.
“A fortress out of a storybook — and for once the storybook is true.”
II. The Cathars and Viollet-le-Duc
In the thirteenth century this was a Cathar stronghold, taken in the brutal Albigensian crusade that broke the independence of the south. The city later fell into ruin, and what stands today owes its dramatic restoration to Viollet-le-Duc in the 1850s — the conical roofs are his, and the debate about them has never quite ended. The history beneath is real enough.
III. The lower town and the canal
Across the river the Bastide Saint-Louis, the lower town, is a grid of squares and plane trees laid out in the Middle Ages, with the Canal du Midi running through on its way from Toulouse to the sea. Stay down here for the markets and the everyday life, and keep the floodlit Cité for the walk back at night.
