Photo : Wikimedia Commons
Le village et l'Abbaye de Caunes-Minervois
The village houses a heritage of incredible historical richness: around the bend of medieval lanes you discover façades of mansions from the eleventh to the eighteenth century. The marble sculptures in the village invite you to discover the quarries that gave Caunes-Minervois international renown for its incarnat red marble. It was widely used under Louis XIV notably at Versailles. But it is also found at the Opéra Garnier... some quarries are still worked today.
Romanesque abbey of Saint-Pierre and Saint-Paul
A Benedictine abbey with a superb pre-Romanesque apse, an abbey church richly adorned with Caunes incarnat marble, famous at Versailles and in all the most prestigious monuments of Europe. You can also visit a crypt holding the remains of the first Carolingian church, the seventeenth-century conventual buildings and a primitive twelfth-century cloister.
Marble quarries
Caunes-Minervois is a village of international renown thanks to its marble production. Its open-air quarries, worked since the Roman Empire, will let you discover the famous intense red Incarnat marble found at the Trianon of Versailles, the Opéra Garnier in Paris or the Arc de Triomphe. To see: the historic Roy quarry, part of the hiking path that bears its name; the working Terralbes quarry (groups); the working Villerambert quarry (guided visits for individuals and groups); the Marble Museum; the many monumental sculptures; the Marble Path (hikes); the Marble Festival in June.
