It’s about a 30-minute walk from the Visitor’s Center in the Bastide, up the hill and over the Pont Vieux, the picturesque pedestrian bridge that crosses the Aude River. Built in 1320, it was the only link between the medieval walled city and the Bastide Saint Louis until the 19th century.
Beyond a street lined with shops, restaurants and hotels, I look up and see towers and expansive ramparts peeking out above the tree line. It is the largest extant fortified city in Europe, but its size still takes me by surprise.
Carcassonne dates back to the 1st century BC, when it was a Roman settlement known as Carcasso. Development of its fortifications started during the 4th century. The city was renamed Carcassonne by the 15th century and remained mostly isolated from the religious wars of the next two centuries. The French Revolution proved destructive, with many buildings burned and the city dwellers tearing stone from the battlements to build (or perhaps rebuild) their own homes.
I see a dirt path which takes me (and everyone else) up to the city gate. I pause at a stone carving of Lady Carcas, an 8th century figure whose legend I have included at the end of this article. The carving is a replica of the original 16th century piece, which is eroded and now housed in one of the castle museums.
I enter the city via a drawbridge over a deep, dry moat, flanked by two 13th century towers linked by a stone archway. I look up and see the portcullis, and a ‘break-back trap’ – an opening where stones could be dropped onto invaders. The bridge is off-set, making the entrance into the city a zig-zag rather than a straight path which also makes it harder for invaders to march through.
I expected to find a walled castle filled with ruins. What I find is a living city, with hotels, restaurants, shops and even some cars, though vehicular traffic is not allowed between 10 AM – 6 PM. What must it be like to live and work in an actual castle…
There are several guided tours you can take here. The historical tour I had reserved is led by an enthusiastic docent whom I have a hard time understanding, between her accent and a stout wind that came up about 30 minutes into the 1.5 hour tour. I find an English guide book afterwards to help me fill in the blanks.
Most of the building facades have been rebuilt, but the streets and squares are true to their original layout. There are two wells here although I only found one. It is the older of the two, dating to the 14th century with its columns and fittings dating to the Renaissance. It is said that Visigoth treasure is hidden underneath it, and that the underground water network of the city starts from this point.
I pass up the Inquisition Museum (having seen enough on that topic in Spain) but stop in at the School Museum, which I will cover in a separate article. I also duck into the Saint-Nazaire Cathedral – half Romanesque and half Gothic, built on the site of their original Notre Dame, which was pillaged in the 8th century. I will devote a separate article to the cathedral as well.
After the docent tour, I pay for a self-guided tour that allows access to Carcassonne’s ramparts.
There are two walls – the inner wall built during the Roman era, and a taller outer wall built after the Albigensian Crusade of 1209. You can still see remnants of the Roman walls – look for the red bricks, which Roman masons used as levelers between the stones. The two walls together include 52 towers and barbicans, placed at 15 meter intervals. It takes nearly two hours to circumnavigate the city, and a great many stairs are involved.
After Carcassonne became part of the royal estate in 1226, the city’s defenses were increased by the fortification of the outer wall. This open space was used to assemble troops. The tower was left open on the interior side, so if it was taken by enemy forces, the tower would not offer any protection from crossbow fire from the castle. I find an example of the rounded stones that were designed to deflect arrows, as part of the defensive strategy in the outer wall and towers.
During the 12th century the Trencavel family built their castle here and started repairs on the inner Gallo-Roman wall. The castle is built on the highest point within the Gallo-Roman wall, and the furthest spot away from the drawbridge. It was surrounded by a dry moat and is marked by towers with wooden balconies called ‘hoardings’. Openings in the floor allowed the soldiers to shoot arrows and drop stones onto anyone attempting to scale the wall. The wooden walls were covered with wet animal skins to prevent them from being set on fire. Commonly used during the 12th-13th centuries, wooden hoardings were replaced by stone machicolations. These hoardings date to 1911 as part of the architect’s design during the city’s reconstruction.
The courtyard of the castle would have originally been shaded by plane trees (plantanes), with an elm tree at the center – the secular symbol of nobility in this region. Of the nine towers in the wall surrounding the castle, the Tour du Paon is the oldest and tallest, and is the site where legend has it that Lady Carcas threw the pig that convinced the Frankish king Pepin to lift his siege in 759.
On the other side of the courtyard is the Keep, part of the Trencavel residence. Above the line of square holes (which I assume supported beams for a floor) are the outlines of the crenelations which were filled in during the 13th century to increase the height of the keep.
There’s a beautiful panoramic video that takes up an entire wall in the Great Room between two of the towers. The video presents a birds eye view of the city, and details of the glass in the cathedral. I did not spend as much time here as I should have, in retrospect it would have been a really good rest stop.
Walking through this great room brings me to the Count’s Chamber, housing sculptures that were salvaged during the 19th century restoration (which I will cover in yet another article). After exiting those rooms, I stop to admire the view of the farms and orchards that stretch beyond the walls and watch towers.
The back side of the ramparts provides a view of the amphitheater, built in 1908 on the site of the medieval cloister that was destroyed during the French Revolution. A theater festival was organized in 1956 by actor/director Jean Deschamps. The theater was renovated in 1973 and continues to host festivals every year in July.
It’s a long and exhausting walk, but a very informative one which gives you access to museums you would not see elsewise. If you ever visit Carcassonne, I highly recommend this tour.
Just as the city was about to be sold to a stone quarry in the 19th century, two men – Jean-Pierre Cros-Mayrevieille and Prosper Mérimée – stepped in and influenced members of Parliament and Prince Bonaparte to fund restoration. Work began on the cathedral in 1844 and the rest of the walled city from 1852-1910, and focused on restoring the battlements and roofs to many of the towers. The restoration was strongly criticized during Viollet-le-Duc’s lifetime. After having finished a project in northern France, he made the error of using slate instead of terracotta tiles. Slate was not a local stone to Carcassonne, but was a more typical roofing material in the north, as was the addition of the pointed tips on the roofs.
Regardless, we have these men to thank for restoring the walled city and conserving its history within its walls and towers.
Carcassonne had been taken by the Arabs during the Umayyad invasion of Gaul in 725, and were driven out by the Franks in 759, led by their king, Pepin the Short. From that piece of history sprang an oral legend documented to the 12th century. There are several variances on the legend, this one is my favorite.
A Saracen princess named Carcas ruled the city after her husband died during a skirmish with the Franks. To protect the city, she armed the women, children and old men and posted them at the ramparts, and posted straw dummies dressed in her dead soldier’s uniforms to double the numbers of the armed living. (The story bears striking resemblance to El Cid, the Spanish epic written at about the same time.)
As the city was nearing the end of its food supplies, Lady Carcas ordered one of her Christian subjects to bring her their last pig, and had it taken to one of the towers where it was fed the last bushel of grain from the city stores. The pig was hurled off the tower, and burst when it hit the ground below. The Frankish army, seeing this fat pig with a stomach full of wheat, determined that the city had plenty of food if they were willing to make such a display, and lifted the siege.
Some versions of this story attribute Lady Carcas to saving the city from Charlemagne, but it was actually his father, Pepin the Short, who history records as having laid the siege and driving the Arabs out of Carcassonne.
There is also a graveyard outside the city gate which is worth a stop, most of the graves that I saw dated to the 19th century, though I did not walk the entire length of this burial ground.
Also, if you walk back to town, keep your eye out for a side street that leads you to a mural depicting the history of Carcassonne, which is presented in the style of an illuminated manuscript. https://davenotravels.blog/2023/10/04/an-illuminated-history-the-directors-cut/
Additional photos of the city are at https://davenotravels.blog/2023/10/05/carcassonne/
Additional photos of the ramparts are at https://davenotravels.blog/2023/10/06/the-ramparts-the-directors-cut/
Since the Walled City is in fact a city, it is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. There is no admission. Individual shops, restaurants and other sites have their own hours. Watch for cars after 6 PM! Book a hotel within these walls, and plan on staying a couple of days.
This is a castle. There are no elevators. The main inner city has a brick surface and is not entirely level. The List (the area between the two walls) is heavily cobblestoned and might be problematic for wheelchairs and walkers. There are Many Stairs. Once you enter the tour of the Ramparts, you can only walk one direction and there are no shortcuts to get back down to the ground. There are no restrooms or water sources in the Ramparts. Expect 2-2.5 hours to complete that tour.
There is parking available in a pay lot behind the castle, as well as a tourist train and a city bus. The walk is a very pleasant one, with a moderate grade up the hill. I recommend the walk if you are able. There are numerous shops and restaurants along the way.
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Heather Daveno hails from Seattle, Washington, where she works as an office manager by day and a self taught textile artisan by night. In her spare time she is a “hobby historian” and is currently researching the female side of her family history for a book she plans to write, titled: “The Matriarch Diaries.”
You can see her current textile projects at August Phoenix Mercantile and her travels at Daveno Travels.