Carcassonne Cite
— ramparts holding the last of the light.
Not only on a wall.
“Two concentric stone walls and fifty-two towers, on a hill above the Aude. The Romans walled the site first; the medieval city grew out of the Roman footprint and kept it. Most visitors cross the old bridge from the lower town and climb. Inside the walls a small population still lives, alongside the Basilique Saint-Nazaire and the Château Comtal. The Viollet-le-Duc restoration in the 1850s gave the towers their pointed roofs, which Parisian critics argued about for the better part of a century. In the south of France, in the old Cathar country, the place reads at every angle as a city the wreckers did not get to.
Carcassonne Cite, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
The place, in three passes.
The Cité de Carcassonne sits on a hill above the right bank of the Aude, in the Aude department of southern France's Occitanie region. The walled town is the medieval upper city; the modern Bastide Saint-Louis below it was laid out in the thirteenth century after the original lower town was destroyed. Two concentric rings of fortification, about 3 kilometres in total length, ring the Cité, broken by fifty-two towers and entered through the Porte Narbonnaise and the Porte d'Aude. The site has been inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 1997, recognised as the most complete surviving example of a medieval European fortified town. Most arrivals are from the lower city, on foot across the Pont Vieux.
The fortifications enclose roughly 11 hectares and rise on Gallo-Roman foundations laid in the third and fourth centuries. The lower walls keep visible Roman courses, including the characteristic red-brick lacing; the higher walls are thirteenth-century work commissioned under Louis IX and Philip III. After the kingdom of France absorbed the Cité in 1247, the inner ring of defences was added behind the older outer ring, producing the double-wall geometry the place is now known for. The pointed slate roofs on the towers are not original. They are the work of Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, who began the restoration in 1853, and were imported from northern French practice; southern preservationists disputed the choice for decades after his death.
Entry to the Cité itself is free at any hour; only the Château Comtal and the ramparts walk charge admission, managed by the Centre des monuments nationaux and open daily except 1 January, 1 May, and 25 December. The Basilique Saint-Nazaire is free to enter. The site sees several million visitors annually, with peak congestion through July and August. The 14 July fireworks display known as the Embrasement de la Cité is the largest event of the year. Early morning and the hour after the gates fall quiet are the times the upper streets read closest to their medieval scale. Trains arrive at Carcassonne station from Toulouse in under an hour.