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It is a visit that all three wanted to do: Joseph for the history of the city and the Cathars, Claire for the role-playing game and the locations of the film Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, and The Grandma for Occitan literature.
They have enjoyed a fantastic breakfast, have walked through historical sites and have been carried away by the magic and mystery that surrounds this walled city.
In the afternoon, the three friends have rested at the hotel while have been watching the Northern Star, which has had a very important match against the biggest rival today. She has done a great job, as always, and it has been a very interesting match for tactical football lovers.
After the match, they have left for Perpinyà where they will visit some friends tonight, in which will be the last stage of this trip through Provençal, Occitan and Catalan lands before returning to Barcelona.
Carcassona is an Occitan fortified city in the department of Aude.
Inhabited since the Neolithic Period, Carcassona is located in the plain of the Aude between historic trade routes, linking the Atlantic to the Mediterranean Sea and the Massif Central to the Pyrénées. Its strategic importance was quickly recognised by the Romans, who occupied its hilltop until the demise of the Western Roman Empire. In the fifth century, the region of Septimania was taken over by the Visigoths, who founded the city of Carcassona in the newly established Visigothic Kingdom.
Its citadel, known as the Vila de Carcassona, is a medieval fortress dating back to the Gallo-Roman period and restored by the theorist and architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc between 1853 and 1879. It was added to the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites in 1997 because of the exceptional preservation and restoration of the medieval citadel. Consequently, Carcassona relies heavily on tourism but also counts manufacturing and winemaking as some of its other key economic sectors.
The first signs of settlement in this region have been dated to about 3500 BC, but the hill site of Carsac -a Celtic place-name that has been retained at other sites in the south- became an important trading place in the sixth century BC. The Volcae Tectosages fortified it and made it into an oppidum, a hill fort, which is when it was named Carsac.
The folk etymology -involving a châtelaine named Lady Carcas, a ruse ending a siege, and the joyous ringing of bells (Carcas sona)- though memorialized in a neo-Gothic sculpture of Mme. Carcas on a column near the Narbonna Gate, is a modern reconstruction of a 16th-century depiction. The name can be derived as an augmentative of the name Carcas.
Carcassona became strategically identified when the Romans fortified the hilltop around 100 BC and eventually made it the colonia of Julia Carsaco, later Carcaso, later Carcasum by the process of swapping consonants known as metathesis. The main part of the lower courses of the northern ramparts dates from Gallo-Roman times. In AD 462 the Romans officially ceded Septimania to the Visigothic king Theodoric II who had held Carcassonne since AD 453.
Theodoric is thought to have begun the predecessor of the basilica that is now dedicated to Saint Nazaire. In AD 508 the Visigoths successfully foiled attacks by the Frankish king Clovis I. In Francia, the Arab and Berber Muslim forces invaded the region of Septimania in AD 719 and deposed the local Visigothic Kingdom in AD 720; after the Frankish conquest of Narbona in 759, the Muslim Arabs and Berbers were defeated by the Christian Franks and retreated to Andalusia after 40 years of occupation, and the Carolingian king Pepin the Short came up reinforced.
A medieval fiefdom, the county of Carcassona, controlled the city and its environs. It was often united with the county of Razès. The origins of Carcassona as a county probably lie in local representatives of the Visigoths, but the first count known by name is Bello of the time of Charlemagne. Bello founded a dynasty, the Bellonids, which would rule many honoures in Septimania and Catalonia for three centuries.
In 1067, Carcassona became the property of Raimond-Bernard Trencavel, viscount of Albi and Nîmes, through his marriage with Ermengard, sister of the last count of Carcassona. In the following centuries, the Trencavel family allied in succession with either the counts of Barcelona or of Tolosa. They built the Château Comtal and the Basilica of Saints Nazarius and Celsus. In 1096, Pope Urban II blessed the foundation stones of the new cathedral.
Carcassona became famous for its role in the Albigensian Crusades when the city was a stronghold of Occitan Cathars. In August 1209 the crusading army of the Papal Legate, abbot Arnaud Amalric, besieged the city. Viscount Raymond-Roger de Trencavel was imprisoned while negotiating his city's surrender and died in mysterious circumstances three months later in his dungeon. The people of Carcassona were allowed to leave -in effect, expelled from their city with nothing more than the shirts on their backs. Simon de Montfort was appointed the new viscount and added to the fortifications.
In 1240, Trencavel's son tried unsuccessfully to reconquer his old domain. The city submitted to the rule of the kingdom of France in 1247. Carcassona became a border fortress between France and the Crown of Aragon under the 1258 Treaty of Corbeil. King Louis IX founded the new part of the town across the river. He and his successor Philip III built the outer ramparts. Contemporary opinion still considered the fortress impregnable. During the Hundred Years' War, Edward the Black Prince failed to take the city in 1355, although his troops destroyed the lower town.
In 1659, the Treaty of the Pyrenees transferred the border province of Rosselló to France, and Carcassona's military significance was reduced. Its fortifications were abandoned and the city became mainly an economic center of the woollen textile industry, for which a 1723 source quoted by Fernand Braudel found it the manufacturing centre of Languedoc. It remained so until the Ottoman market collapsed at the end of the eighteenth century, then reverted to a country town. The town hall, known as Hôtel de Rolland, was completed in 1761.
More information: Remparts Carcassone
Derrière les montagnes bleues;
Mais, pour y parvenir, il faut,
Il faut faire cinq grandes lieues,
En faire autant pour revenir!
Ah! si la vendange était bonne!
Le raisin ne veut pas jaunir
Je ne verrai pas Carcassonne!
They see the town from up on high,
Behind the range of mountains blue;
But, to arrive there by and by,
Some five great leagues I’ll have to do;
And do as much just to come back!
Ah! Had the grapes in plenty grown!
They all that yellow ripeness lack:
I never will see Carcassonne!
Gustave Nadaud
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