Photo : Photographe anonyme pour Ville de Canet-en-Roussillon / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Château de Canet-en-Roussillon
The Château de Canet, in the Pyrénées-Orientales, is an 11th-century Frankish construction. The Roussillon had by then been retaken from the Saracens for more than a hundred and fifty years, and Frankish settlers from the north had been able to organise themselves. In the marshy strip along the beach, a few inhabitants had gathered on a small hill, safe from the water, forming the beginnings of a village.
It was on this easily defended hill that the castle was built, named 'Castellum de Caned' in the texts. It is first mentioned in 1013, then in 1017 as 'Villa de Caneto' (a villa then meant a small village), and again in 1052 as 'Canetum'.
The castle soon became the seat of the viscounty of Canet, whose members formed a powerful family in the 12th century.
