In our trip to France we have visited the stunning town of Carcassonne, that was a pre-Roman town, a Roman colony and then was conquered by Visigoths, Saracens, and Franks (under which was the capital of a county), under which became the capital of a county. It became prosperous in the period of the city-republics and then became part of the kingdom of France under the king Louis IX. The stunning fortifications, restored in the 19th century by Viollet-le-Duc, one of the founders of the modern science of conservation, that also added the roofs of the towers, consist in two lines of walls and in a castle, for a total length of more than 3 km. The internal walls are 1250 m long and have twenty-six round or horseshoe-shaped towers and follow the Late Roman walls (3rd - 4th century), made of ashlars and bricks, that are still visible on two thirds of the length of the walls and that were 3 m thick and 6-8 m high with 34-38 horseshoes-shaped low bastions at roughly regular intervals. They had rubble cores with courses of dressed ashlars intersected by courses of bricks and built on strong foundations; they are built on cubic bases surmounted by towers with windows on two storeys and semicircular external walls, the lower storey of which was filled with rubble to resist shock from battering rams. They were reinforced (11th - 13th century) in the medieval age by stones, merlons and windows. The external walls, 1650 m long and lower (7-8 m high) than the internal walls, have 19 round towers, that have many openings and are opened on their inner sides (so as to deny shelter to an enemy that might have seized them), three of which are barbicans and a fourth is a covered passage that linked the walls with the great barbican (where is now the church of St. Gimer, projected by Viollet-le-Duc), demolished in the 19th century. Outside (except on a corner, where are sufficient natural protections) there is a 4 m deep moat and there is a large space (the lists) between the two lines of walls. The walls were reconstructed in the final phase of building, in the late 13th century: two-thirds of them were rebuilt and modernized and four towers were enlarged, according to developments in military architecture. The main towers are: de la Vade, of St. Nazaire, that defend the cathedral, of the Bishop, that link the two lines of walls, the gate of the Aude, du Trésau and the gate Narbonnaise, that has a barbican and is imposing and very well equipped. The castle, butted up against the internal walls, has ten round towers in part with wooden roofs, a barbican, a dry moat, two courts, two living quarters with two squat towers, originally two-storeyed and surmounted by a crenellated parapet, and a defensive wall with three Roman bastions. The cathedral of St. Nazaire and Celse is a Romanesque masterpiece restored by Viollet-le-Duc, that added the two towers on the façade and the crenellated parapet, because he though that the church played a role in the defences of the town. It has a central six-bayed nave with an interrupted barrel vault and two narrow lateral naves with almost the same height and fully vaulted; the transverse arches spring alternatively from square columns surrounded by embedded columns and round pillars; the capitals have vegetal and geometric motifs. The Romanesque choir was replaced with a High Gothic structure, that is a transept with a six-sided apse; its exterior don’t have buttresses and the stability is assured by the interior vaulting. There are also chapels, sculptures, many tombs, relieves and stained glass. The roads and the squares have nice medieval houses; between them is also two wells, one of which is 40 m deep, and the remains of the church of St. Sernin.

The town is one of the most beautiful and spectacular places I have ever seen especially because of the impresiveness of the fortifications. It's absolutely worth to be visited (if you go there you must leave the car outside the centre) also because it's the most impressive fortified town in the world and justifies the inscription.

Photo: Carcassonne - View to the Cité from the Old Bridge of the Lower Town