"Aimer, ce n’est pas se regarder l’un l’autre, c’est regarder ensemble dans la même direction." (“Love doesn’t mean gazing at each other, but looking, together, in the same direction.”)
-- Antoine de Saint-Exupery====================================================================
(in the capital of the Aude départment in the Occitanie region of southwestern France) The city of Carcassonne is located in the south of France about 80 km (50 mi.) east of Toulouse. Its strategic location between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea has been known since the Neolithic era, some 12,000 years ago. (The The rivers Aude, Fresquel, and the Canal du Midi flow through the city.)
+ This French city is full of life, especially in terms of architectural marvels. La Cite de Carcassonne, for example, is a walled castle that showcases fortification technologies from ancient Roman to medieval times. The Statue of Lady Carcas is a worthy architectural gem that has an interesting legend that links her to the protection of the city from Frankish invasion.
+ Perched on a rocky hilltop and bristling with zigzag battlements, stout walls, and spiky turrets, the fortified city of Carcassonne looks like something out of a children’s storybook when it's seen from afar. A UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1997, itis most people’s idea of the perfect medieval castle.
+ Carcassonne is located in the plain of the Aude between historic trade routes, linking the Atlantic to the Mediterranean Sea and the Massif Central to the Pyrénées. Its strategic importance was quickly recognized by the Ancient Romans, who occupied its hilltop until the demise of the Western Roman Empire. In the fifth century, the region of Septimania was taken over by the Visigoths, who founded the city of Carcassonne in the newly established Visigothic Kingdom.
+ Its citadel, known as the Cité de Carcassonne, is a medieval fortress dating back to the Gallo-Roman period and restored between 1853 and 1879. Since then, Carcassonne has increasingly relieey on tourism -- while also counting manufacturing and winemaking as some of its other key economic sectors.
+ Carcassonne is found to the southeast of Toulouse, near the eastward bend of the Aude River, which divides the city into two towns, the Ville Basse and the Cité. -- which sas the finest remains of medieval fortifications in Europe.
+ On the summit of an isolated hill rearing abruptly on the Aude’s right bank, the site of the Cité was occupied as early as the 5th century BCE by the Iberians, then by Gallo-Romans. The inner rampart was built in 485 CE, when Euric was king of the Visigoths. Clovis failed to take it in 508, though Muslim invaders succeeded in 728, as did Pippin III the Short in 752. The viscounts of Carcassonne and Béziers built the Basilique Saint-Nazaire (1096–1150), and about 1125 the Château Comtal was incorporated into the Visigothic rampart. In 1247, as a consequence of the Albigensian Wars, the viscounts’ possessions were confiscated by the French crown. Great artworks were then undertaken.
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