Photo diary: South of France, part 2 (Carcasonne)

October 6, 2015

(click photos to enlarge)

George and Laurene took us for a day trip to the nearby town of Carcasonne, whose name was familiar to me only because of the board game. Little did I know that this medieval walled town figured heavily in the Albigensian Heresy, a chapter in the history of the Roman Catholic Church that I’d vaguely heard of but knew much more about by the end of this trip. Our hosts turned us on to Stephen O’Shea’s excellent popular history The Perfect Heresy: The Revolutionary Life and Death of the Medieval Cathars. (Google “Cathars” or “Albigensian Crusade.” It’s a horrifying story of Christians persecuting other Christians to match any Sunni/Shiite conflict we know about today.)

9-14 carcasonne from a distance9-14 l'histoire9-14 turrets9-14 stained glass closeup9-14 cathedral stained glass9-14 river side of castle9-14 handsome frenchman9-14 castle fresco 19-14 george laurene andy carcasonne9-14 andy at castle
When we walked into the cathedral, an a cappella quartet (the Doros Choir of Moscow) was performing sacred music in close to ideal acoustics:

This entry was posted on October 6, 2015 at 7:19 pm and is filed under Photo diary.

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