Carcassonne was an important military and commercial center in southern
France. A key stronghold since Roman times and the capital of a
county by the ninth century, Carcassonne was as much a military center
as any castle. Having survived many sieges, it was abandoned in 1240 and
rebuilt by Louis IX in 1248. The city has double curtain walls; the outer
has twenty towers and the inner, twenty-five (see Figure 13). Some of the
towers are independent fortresses and even have their own wells. A barbican
and complex outerworks guard the main city gate. The architect
Viollet-le-Duc restored the medieval city in the nineteenth century, adding
conical tiled roofs inappropriate to southern French architecture. The
citadel is rectangular in plan, with rooms and towers arranged around an
open central courtyard. A deep moat cuts the citadel off from the city.
World History
