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Château de Puilaurens
On the departmental boundary of the Aude and the Pyrénées-Orientales, Puilaurens long remained the southernmost fortress of the kingdom of France. Located at nearly 700 metres' altitude, this castle overlooks the village of Lapradelle, in the middle of a fir forest. The first mention of Puilaurens castle appears in 985, when it belonged to the abbey of Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa. In the eleventh century it was under the suzerainty of the count of Besalù, then of the viscount of Narbonne. The first known castellan of Puilaurens, Pierre Catala, witnessed the submission of Guillaume de Peyrepertuse to Simon de Montfort. Twelve years later, it was Guillaume de Peyrepertuse who commanded the stronghold. Poorly defended and little maintained from the late seventeenth century, it was finally abandoned at the Revolution. A legend says the White Lady, a great-niece of Philip the Fair, comes on pale nights to wander her vaporous veils on the wall-walk of the dismantled ramparts.
