Travel: The fairytale castle city of Carcassonne, France

Carcassonne is located near Toulouse, in the Languedoc Roussillon Midi Pyrénées region of France. The city is several millennia old, dating back to BC times. The fortified castle contains 53 towers and barbicans. In 1849 it was decided that the castle be preserved as a national monument and it was added to the UNESCO world heritage list of sites in 1997. The Canal du Midi running through both Toulouse and Carcassonne is also on the heritage sites list.

Come and explore the cité with me and let’s travel back in time! Of course you cannot really experience the sense of ‘wow’ unless you see it for real so I hope my pictures make you curious enough to visit it for yourself.

This is Rue Barbacane, down the road from where our hotel was located. I can’t even begin to imagine how old these buildings are.

Across the road from the previous photo is the Eglise Saint Gimer situated in Place Saint Gimer. You can see the castle in the background beckoning us.

My Little Prince was quite impressed with the castle 😉

Up we go up the very steep cobblestoney path (Montée de la Porte d’Aude).

Here we are, near the top.

Looking west through one of the crenels or crenellations (yes I had to look that up! I’m not quite up to date with castle terminology) towards the Aude River and the newer part of the city.

It looks like there aren’t many people around but don’t let these photos fool you. In the inner city there were much more people!

Basilique Saint Nazaire, first constructed during the 6th century.

I thought this sculpture around a sculpture was interesting.

Château Comtal, the ‘heart’ of Carcassonne. Unfortunately we didn’t go in because we didn’t have a lot of time and there was a huge queue to buy tickets to get inside (and it looked like it was going to start raining at any minute so we wanted to leave for Spain).

Cassoulet, the famous dish of the region (beans and meat)

Pretty gardens underneath the castle.

Some of the delicious sweet goodies you’ll find in town.

The start of Spring.

The night we arrived… Despite being too late and too dark to do any sightseeing it was the perfect time to have dinner. In fact, I was worried it would be too late and we wouldn’t find anything open but to my delight every restaurant was open and full of customers. Being such a touristy place you’d expect high prices but I was very pleasantly surprised. We had dinner at Le Trouvère which I was very happy with. The food was good, the service was fast and the prices were very reasonable. Later on we found that this seemed to be the case with most restaurants there. There was a girl eating by herself sitting in the table next to us. We struck up a conversation and it turns out that she’s a Sydneysider too, but had moved to Perth and was currently travelling around Europe for 8 weeks. I love talking to tourists who’ve been to xyz for the first time. They all seem so happy and excited and I can see their eyes lighting up when they talk about it. It seems like so long ago now where everything was new and exciting for me… but I still love travelling and discovering new places.

After the meal I was feeling satisfied but still pretty exhausted. Still, the photographer in me was itching to do some photographing and given our hotel was so close and now that most of the tourists had gone to sleep, I’d be able to easily get shots without people in them. I had to walk up a steep and very narrow and dark path (Rue Petite Côte de la Cité) and it was after 11:30pm by then and I admit I was shit scared wondering if any big bad wolves were going to jump out of the bushes at any moment. After I finally got the settings right on my camera and was getting settled I heard a big group of teenagers talking in Spanish so I had to wait a while for them to leave before I photographed another location. Soon after that (at around 11:45pm) they turned out all the lights! It was almost pitch black. Luckily I had a torch with me but still… it was really quite scary as I couldn’t see much and there wasn’t a single person around me. I told myself if anyone comes I would whack them over the head with my tripod. But my fears were unwarranted. I made it back to my hotel safe and sound, too hyped up and excited to sleep.

I’d seen all these postcards with pictures of the town where you could see the whole castle and was curious to know where the viewpoint was (so I could take my own similar shot!) Truth be told I don’t buy postcards much anymore as a lot of them seem like they were printed 10 or 20 years ago and I prefer to take my own photos.

The next morning we needed to get petrol and the GPS told us to cross the Pont Neuf (New Bridge) into the newer part of town. It was a coincidence that right there and then we found that exact same postcard view. I was ecstatic! It was so windy the wind threatened to knock my tripod over but I got a few decent shots. The bridge is Pont Vieux (Old Bridge).

Looking at these photos can you see why Disney used this place as inspiration for the design of Sleeping Beauty’s castle?

Trompe l’oeil (mural) on the side of the building at the end of the bridge. If we had had more time I would’ve loved to explore the newer part of Carcassonne, La Ville Basse (which you can see in the distance on the bottom left of the photo). It seemed really pretty and the look, layout and size reminded me a lot of the town of Versailles.

GO

Carcassonne can be reached by train in less than one hour from Toulouse, 3.5 hours from Lyon and 5.5 hours from Paris. It can also be reached by bus or you could drive or use rideshare such as Blablacar. There is also a small airport in Carcassonne otherwise the next closest airports are in Toulouse and Perpignan.

STAY

We stayed at the Adonis La Carcassonne Résidence La Barbacane which is a decent 3 star hotel and our large room came with a kitchenette. For a nice atmosphere you could stay inside the castle walls but there are not a great deal of hotels to choose from and I can imagine parking and dragging your luggage over those cobblestones would be a nightmare. Most of the hotels are located just outside the castle walls. Please note that for those with mobility issues it would be quite difficult as there are cobblestones, steps and narrow paths everywhere as to be expected of a Medieval city.

DO

There isn’t a great amount to do since it’s such a small city. The best thing is to simply walk around and admire the castle fortifications and churches. If you have time I would advise also checking out the newer part of town as it has a different feel and it’s where people actually live.

EAT

I was impressed with the two restaurants we went to, Le Trouvère and Les Terrasses de la cité, especially given I hadn’t read any reviews or anything prior like I normally do. At both restaurants the food was tasty, the service was good and fast and the prices were reasonable. My stomach was very satisfied 🙂 I would advise you to go early though (before 12.30pm for lunch or before 7pm for dinner) to any of the restaurants in the main restaurants area as it may be hard to get a table otherwise.

SHOP

There are a lot of artisan (hand made craft) shops and souvenir shops selling unique and beautiful things. There are also lots of sweets shops selling delicious handmade biscuits, chocolate, nougat and macarons. If you’re a fan of medieval attire, costumes and jewellery there are plenty of those stores too.

PHOTO TIPS

To see the city in its entirety, cross Pont Neuf to get a great view of the fortification and Pont Vieux.

It was hard for me to get decent pictures of the centre of the old town as there were simply too many people around. I think around 8-10pm when the daytrippers have gone home and the rest of the tourists are having dinner would be a good time to get some photos. At 9-9:30pm (in May) there was still a bit of light left.

For night shots it was rather difficult as there were still people out and about as it seemed that many tourists (like us) arrive late after a road trip, train or bus ride and have dinner very late. Be careful they turn out the castle’s lights at around 11:45pm.