Carcassonne

So I decided to take my fathers advice, from his comment on my blog, and traveled to Carcassonne, France. I was not disapointed at all in what I found there. In Carcassone there is a new town and an old town. I was interested in the old town because it sits within a massive medievil fortress! This is by far one of the coolist castles I have ever seen (only Warick Castle in England comes close). The fortress sits on top of a huge hill, has a moat (although their is no longer water in it), and has two massive outer wall rings, and a huge keep inside of the outer walls. The hostel I stayed at was within the castle walls! indeed I almost never left the castle as their were so many things to explore.

The original castle was built by the Romans as a defense aganst invading barbarians. In fact you can still see parts of the castle that were built almost 2000 years ago by the Romans. The castle is also famous because it hosted members of the Cathar religious sect. The Pope declaired the Cathars heritics and ordered a crusaid against them. carcassonne was then sacked by the crusade and fell into french control. The French King Louis IX had the castle strengthened and expanded to its current size in order to defend France's southern border with Spain. Eventually France gained more southern territory and the castle was no longer of strategic importance and fell into disrepair. In the 1800s the castle was restored to its former glory by the same archiologist who restored the Cathedral de Notra Dame de Paris (not a bad resume, eh?), Eugène Viollet-le-Duc. Well I hope this history lesson did not bore you too much, I found it all vey fassinating, there is tons more history about Carcassone but I figured I would just share the highlights!