Château de Carcassonne

It is from the modern bridge spanning the Aude that you should discover the city of Carcassonne. And if possible when the setting sun tints with golden-glinting pinkish grey its geometry, both elegant and complex. It then stands out against the Languedoc sky, like those unreal towns one thought existed only in Gothic illuminations, or in the iridescent distances of Primitives' paintings. Miraculously saved from the ravages of time, and a survivor — only just! — of men's folly, it remains the most formidable fortified ensemble still to be seen in old Europe. A veritable anthology in stone: all along its three kilometres of ramparts, through its forty towers, its two monumental gates, its barbicans, its castle itself equipped with nine towers and a forward gate, in the learned labyrinth of its crenellated wall-walks, stairs, chicanes and posterns, from curtain walls to ditches, from bretèches to turrets, all the military architecture of the Middle Ages can be read like an open book.

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