Carcassonne

I finished out my winter vacation by travelling to Carcassonne, an ancient city in the south of France.  It was originally a Roman colony called Carcasum, and it was the Romans who in 100 BC built its initial fortifications on top of the largest (and really, only) hill in the middle of a wide valley stretching between the Pyrenees and the Massif Centrale, the highlands that stretch up north past Montpellier and towards the Alps.  It is an extremely strategic position in which to build a castle.  Unfortunately, the Roman defenses were not enough to prevent the city from being overrun by the barbarian hordes during the decline of Rome.   Additions were made to the fortifications by the subsequent owners and in 508 AD the Visigoths successfully repelled attacks made by Clovis, king of the Franks.  In 1067, it became the property and center of power for the family of Raimond Bernard Trencavel, the viscount of Albi and Nîmes.  The Trencavel family added to the fortifications, but it was not enough to withstand the crusader army of Simon de Montfort, mobilized by the pope to root out the Cathar heresy which was predominant in the area.  The Cathars were ruthlessly exterminated and an Inquisition was declared by the pope to eradicated any remnants of them in a variety of truly horrific manners.  The castle soon passed into the hands of the French monarchy, who overhauled the city’s defenses and created the most cutting-edge defensive structure that would remain at the top of the list of the strongest defensive positions for several hundred years, until canons firing metal shot made walls irrelevant.  After the crusades, in order to further remove power from the hands of the Trencavel family, the population was moved down the hill to the other side of the river, creating a competing economic sector and allowing the castle to be squarely focused on military purposes.  Today, this distintinction still remains: most of the city lies in the Ville Basse (lower city) and the tourist sector is concentrated within the walls of the medieval city.

I was very impressed with the fortress.  There has been an ongoing restoration project of the castle that started in 1853.  Carcassonne has the distinction of being Europe’s largest, intact castle currently standing.  I enjoyed spending the day touring the ancient keep and ramparts and wandering through the ancient city streets (populated as they were by tourists and vendors hawking to the tourists).

As I sat on the battlements of Carcassonne watching the sun set behind the Pyrenees, like some watchman over one-thousand years before, a still came over the countryside.  Most of tourists had fled and only the sounds of the water roaring down the river and cars travelling along the distant highway served as an anachronistic reminder of what age I was in.  Evening birdsong serenated me from the nests in the towers about me and from the Lower City at the base of the hill.  The roofs of the city lying in the river and canal delta glimmered in the last rays of the sun, the two belltowers of the two churches reared up proudly from the buildings around them.  The Ville basse was more modern the Medieval Cité enclosed by the walls that I was sitting on, but not-quite-so modern, as it too never completely let go of its heritage.   Behind me, the old Roman towers watched over the lowlands solemnly, illuminated, but looking all the same venerable, tired, and derelict.  The Medieval towers, resplendent with their blue conical tops, still held their imperial majesty, still offered the comforts of protection to their people, now antiquated, but still committed to Carcassonne, at both times a symbol of imperial might and of a doggedly determined resistance to oppression and devotion to independence, liberty, and the freedom of philosophy and spirit.