Carcassonne

The last few days we’ve stopped at the town of Carcassonne which still has its medieval walls intact around the old part of the city. In fact some of the walls of the town are so old that they date back to the Romans. The town is situated smack dab in the middle of a valley between two mountain ranges that permits passage from the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. This is a good place to be because everyone who went traipsing up your road had to pay a toll for the right of passage. This made the little town rather rich and sometimes caused it grief since when you have a nice rich town, on a well known road, it becomes  mighty tempting for assorted barbarians to come around to get a piece of the action.
The town of Carcassonne was first built by the Celts the Gauls to be exact, then the Romans came along and took over. By the 5th century, things were going rapidly downhill so along came your friendly neighbourhood barbarians called the Vandals. Today we still recognize their penchant your destroying things with the word vandalize. After that came the Moors from North Africa, who were kicked out by Charlemagne. Then the Cathars became the in group only to be massacred by the same bunch as the ones who did in Montsegur. Finally the French rebuilt and renovated the defences to protect against the Spanish who were not all that far away. After the French beat the Spanish, pushing back the frontier the defences were really no longer needed so the town went into decline, which was in a way a good thing since they pretty much left everything as it was. Even the Germans in WW2 didn’t destroy the town since the made it their HQ for the region. So there we are today with a medieval town with it walls intact just as they were since the Romans.

The bottom of this section of wall is the original Roman fortifications.

The Gatehouse of the major entrance way

Medieval painting of battle between Norman knights and Moors

Base of Roman walls Medieval walls were built outside of them