Carcassonne

Carcassonne stands on the Aude, the fortified Cité on its height and the Bastide Saint-Louis, founded by Louis IX after 1247, on the opposite bank. Under the Treaty of Corbeil of 1258 the town became a frontier fortress between France and the Crown of Aragon, and Louis IX and Philip III raised the outer ramparts of the Cité.

In 1355 the Black Prince, raiding across Languedoc, burned the lower town but did not try to take the Cité. The Bastide was rebuilt at half its former size and fortified in 1359. Five bastions were added to the lower town's defences in the Wars of Religion. The Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659 moved the border to Roussillon, and Carcassonne's military role faded as institutions moved down to the Bastide. Its wealth now came from woollen cloth: Colbert founded the royal cloth manufactory of Les Saptes in 1667, and the fine Languedoc cloth was sold in the Levant. Merchant manufacturers built townhouses in the lower town. When the Revolution created the department of the Aude in 1790, Carcassonne became its capital.