Just back from a Monday to Friday break in Carcassonne. Ashamed to say we knew nothing of this Unesco site until we saw a “48 hours in” feature in one of the Sunday papers, decided it looked promising and made a note! Decided we needed a boost after a few health issues (some ongoing) and hoped October would still be holding some warmth and that the worst of the tourist crowds would have diminished a little.
We stayed within the city walls and the historic hotel was excellent with its own Michelin starred restaurant; despite the 40 euros for a starter we had intended to give it a try but the menu was just too rich for our tastes so we ate in the town bistros in the evenings, some of which were very good indeed. Even tried and enjoyed the local specialty Languedoc cassoulet.
The citadel itself is a lovely place to stroll around, although I can imagine it would be a different story in the height of the tourist season. We hit the Chateau and ramparts on the first morning as the weather was excellent and we’d been promised rain for later in the week. Excellent place to learn the history of the citadel, walk the ramparts and get some fine views of the surrounding area and the “new town” (Bastide Saint-Louis). It was also interesting to walk ‘the Lists’ (Lices). This is the area between the two rampart walls and a is little over 1 km in circumference and was laid out in the 13th century when the second enclosure wall was erected. In the 18th century, the poorest inhabitants of Carcassonne built their houses here prior to them being demolished at the time of Viollet le Duc’s 19th century restoration of the City. Also worthy of note is the St. Nazaire Basilica. The earliest authentic document mentioning this church dates from 925. In 1096 pope Urban II came to Carcassonne and blessed the stones of the cathedral of Saint-Nazaire and Saint Celse. The building was completed during the first half of the 12th century. It was rebuilt several times and then in 1801 it lost its cathedral status to the Saint-Michel church in the Bastide (which we also visited. In 1898 it received the title of Basilica from pope Leo XIII.
The Bastide Saint-Louis is itself a pleasant enough town; it has its fair share of fine buildings but is very much a working city, and none the worse for this, but it’s certainly not postcard picturesque. The aforementioned Saint-Michel cathedral is a lovely building with relatively simple façade but good examples of 14thC stained glass. Internally, it also looked, unsurprisingly, as though it was a perennial struggle to keep it maintained. On our walk into town we also stumbled across the “Centre Culturel De La Memoire Combattante De L’Aude“, which as the title suggests is a small museum dedicated to remembrance of French men (and women) at arms. W arrived just as David was opening, so he guided us through the exhibits in excellent English and brought the whole thing to life. Free entry, but worth your voluntary donation.
We thoroughly enjoyed the visit, a very pleasant mixture of relaxation and exploration. Weather could have been a little kinder, but we got enough sun to squeeze in all the external visits we wanted to. Stansted, however, has become a nightmare of an airport, which is a real shame as it’s so convenient and easy to access – I suppose it is perversely impressive to have ruined what used to be a pleasant start to a trip in such a short space of time!