Rennes-le-Château

Perched on a peak of the Corbières, Rennes-le-Château has only a handful of inhabitants — but attracts each year tens of thousands of visitors, fascinated by the legend of its priest Bérenger Saunière. Arriving poor at the end of the nineteenth century, the abbé nevertheless financed the restoration of his church and the building of a villa and a neo-Gothic tower thanks to a fortune whose origin has never been clearly established.

This enigma gave birth to a whole mythology around a hidden treasure, fuelled by theories mixing Templars, Visigoths and secret society, popularised notably by the novel The Da Vinci Code. The Magdala tower and the church of Sainte-Marie-Madeleine, decorated by Saunière with enigmatic symbols, can still be visited today, with a view over the Corbières and the Pyrenees in the distance.

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