French fortified city Carcassonne is located in Aude district of Occitania. It serves as the prefecture of the department. Carcassonne, which has been inhabited since the Neolithic Age, is situated in the Aude plain between two ancient trade routes that connected the Atlantic to the Mediterranean Sea and the Massif Central to the Pyrénées. Ancient Romans immediately understood its strategic value, and they occupied its hilltop until the fall of the Western Roman Empire. The Visigoths conquered Septimania in the fifth century, and in their newly created Visigothic Kingdom, they erected the city of Carcassonne. The Gallo-Roman era and later medieval castle known as the Cité de Carcassonne was renovated in 1853 by the thinker and architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc. As a result of the extraordinary preservation and restoration of the medieval citadel, it was included on the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites in 1997. Consequently, the economy of Carcassonne is mainly dependent on tourism, but it also depends on manufacturing and winemaking. Since the Neolithic era, people have been aware of its strategic location halfway between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. When the Romans fortified the hilltop in 100 BC and subsequently established it as the colonia of Julia Carsaco, Carcassonne started to be recognized strategically. The Visigothic ruler Theodoric II had controlled Carcassonne since 453 when the Romans officially handed up Septimania to him in 462. The county of Carcassonne, a medieval lordship, was in charge of the city and its surroundings. It frequently joined forces with the county of Razès. In France, Arab and Berber Muslim forces invaded the region of Septimania in 719 and overthrew the local Visigoth Kingdom in 720. After the Frankish conquest of Narbonne in 759, the Muslim Arabs and Berbers were defeated by the Christian Franks and fled to Andalusia after 40 years of occupation, and the Carolingian king Pepin the Short came up strengthened. As an Occitan Cathar stronghold during this time, Carcassonne rose to fame for its participation in the Albigensian Crusades. The border province of Roussillon was given to France by the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659, which diminished the military importance of Carcassonne. The first fortification to employ hoardings during a siege was Carcassonne. Through square holes in the face of the wall, temporary wooden platforms and walls would be attached to the upper walls of the fortress, protecting the defenders on the wall and allowing defenders to extend past the wall to launch projectiles at the attackers at the wall below, acting much like a permanent machicolation
[Information and Image Credit : Carcassonne, Wikipedia]
[Wikipedia-Link : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcassonne ]
[Image : Aerial photograph of the Cité de Carcassonne ]
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[Wikipedia-Source-Image-URL : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1_carcassonne_aerial_2016.jpg ]
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