Châteaux de Lastours

A lock on the Cabardès since the early Middle Ages, the Lastours site is an exceptional ensemble with its four castles built at 300 metres' altitude, on top of a rocky spur. Cabaret, Surdespine, Quertinheux and Tour Régine overlook the course of the Orbiel and the Grézilhou torrent, deeply cut into the valley. The oldest known remains go back to the Middle Bronze Age, about 1,500 years before our era: a cave yielded the burial of a little girl, "the princess with the necklace": her body was covered with objects including amber beads and jewellery evoking Mycenaean or Egyptian art. The castles of Cabaret, Surdespine and Quertinheux existed before the Albigensian Crusade, but in a form different from their present appearance. At the time of flourishing Catharism, the lord Pierre Roger de Cabaret appears closely tied to followers of the new religion and suffered the crusaders' assaults from 1209. At the Revolution, the Lastours castles were definitively abandoned. They were listed as Historic Monuments as early as 1905.

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