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Few medieval cities anywhere in Europe announce themselves quite as dramatically as Carcassonne. Seen from the plain of the Aude, the double ring of ramparts, the fifty-odd towers, and the pointed turrets of the Château Comtal rise above the lower town like a stage set that has somehow survived intact. The Cité de Carcassonne is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the most complete examples of medieval fortification on the continent, its walls stretching for nearly three kilometres and enclosing a small inhabited quarter that has been continuously occupied since the Gallo-Roman period.

The city divides naturally into two distinct parts. The Cité sits on its rocky spur on the eastern bank of the Canal du Midi, its lanes lined with Romanesque and Gothic stonework, the Basilica of Saints Nazarius and Celsus tucked within the inner walls. Below, across the Pont Vieux, lies the Bastide Saint-Louis, the lower town laid out on a grid in the thirteenth century after the French crown expelled the local population following the Albigensian Crusade. The Bastide has its own unhurried character, with a covered market, shaded squares, and the everyday life of a provincial Occitan town that visitors who spend only a few hours in the Cité tend to miss entirely.