Ruined castles in the air

The road from the coast rose into hills as we turned off the Perpignan highway onto a smaller route.

The landscape was scattered with vineyards that lay like rugs between rocky spines. 

As we rounded the corners, the blur of motion revealed roses planted at the ends of some rows. Roses are more sensitive to mildew than the hardy vine stock of the region, and so the flowers are used as an early warning system. When they die off, the vines must be sprayed.

I suppose early warning systems were our agenda too, but these were much older and took the form of piled stone.

This region once formed a border zone between France and Spain, with the Principality of Catalonia and the Kingdom of Aragon stretching up the Mediterranean coast beyond Perpignan. Its hills are scattered with castles, and many of them sheltered beleaguered Cathars during the pope’s brutal Albigensian Crusade.

Aguilar Castle was our first destination. Set on the rocher aux aigles (eagle’s rock), it commanded a landscape rich in iron, silver and copper deposits that built the power of Olivier de Termes, the 13th century lord whose family domain this was. Aguilar became his seat of seigneurial power after the loss of Termes castle in 1228.

The ruin was at the end of a one-lane track that climbed the hillside in bends so steep our small rental car struggled up in second gear, occasionally having to drop into first to keep any momentum at all. 

The track ended at a dirt parking lot beside a vineyard, where the attendant in her little shed must have had long quiet days to read. Unlike the other castles we would visit that day, we had Aguilar to ourselves.

A stocky round tower was the first structure to appear from the holm oak at the end of a short path, followed by the remains of a gate to the ancient castrum, a group of houses within the castle enclosure now long vanished.

As we entered the gap where the gate used to be, I paused to inspect two holes that once held massive door bars, and a stone groove where a portcullis could be dropped with a clang.

The hexagonal 13th century citadel’s six towers are linked by a pentagonal fortification surrounding an inner keep, built so that its point guards the most vulnerable side. Aguilar’s position offered some control over the Corbières Massif, but its low elevation of 321 metres made it easily accessible from the plains. 

Olivier de Termes was on the losing side of the Albigensian Crusade. He signed the surrender of Aguilar Castle in 1241 and left in 1245 for the Holy Land to fight in those other crusades on behalf of his new lord, the King of France. 

Aguilar later formed part of the frontier between France and Aragon. Like so many others, it lost its strategic significance after the signing of the Treaty of the Pyrenees and was eventually abandoned. 

It was time for us to leave, too. A half hour’s drive took us to the castle with the most dramatic setting we would see all day. 

Contrary to popular legends, the castle of Montségur was not the last Cathar refuge to fall to the pope’s crusaders — Quéribus held out until 1255.

Balanced on a wind-whipped crag of rock overlooking one of the rare passes into the Corbières mountains (the Grau de Maury) on one side and the village of Cucugnan on the other, Quéribus is regularly closed to visitors when a gale blows up and thunder and lightning stalk the hills.

It’s 728 metre pinnacle stands alone, backed by a 60 metre precipice, with buildings stacked at different levels in perfect harmony with the rock.

The entry staircase winds from one set of ramparts to the next, each riddled with traps for potential assailants. Arrow slits look down on every step and gateway. Vents open on each side where canons and soldiers could cut down intruders. Holes in the floors of higher levels could become a rain of rocks. 

The lucky assailant who beat such odds would end up at a chamber surrounded by ramparts from which projectiles or arrows would finish him off — that’s if the wind didn’t get him first. The lower levels were hit by such a buffeting that it nearly shoved me off the steps and over the side.

The upper levels of Quéribus contain vaulted stone storerooms, the remains of a kitchen, the shell of the three-storey governor’s residence, and a 60,000 litre tank that channeled water to the levels below.

Above it all stands a massive keep, its large arched windows testifying to the needs of a later more peaceful era. 

Inside, a room with vaulted ceilings — the ‘pillar room’ — was once divided by a wooden floor. Today it reveals the genius of Medieval architecture; four crossed arches meet at the point of the thick central pillar, distributing the massive weight of stone such that the building would be nearly indestructible.

Quéribus’s one point of vulnerability was a hill to its rear —but only in the age of cannon. The old keep was shortened in response to the development of artillery and enclosed in a thick stone shell to repel projectiles. 

Standing on the canon platform atop the keep, the whole of the Rousillon plain was laid out below us, from hazy Mediterranean waves to the rugged chain of the Pyrenees. On a hill in the middle distance, the Tautavel tower marked the old border of Aragon.

This mighty stone bastion was never conquered by force. It was held by Chabert de Barbaira during the Albigensian Crusade. He was captured in an ambush set by a knight in the service of Olivier de Termes, imprisoned in Carcassonne, and forced to give up Quéribus in exchange for his freedom.

Like the other forts in the region, this imposing structure watched over the border between France and Spain until the 1659 Treaty of the Pyrenees made it irrelevant. It was occupied occasionally and finally abandoned around the time of the revolution (1789) and left to fall into ruin.

Standing at the highest point, I could see our final destination on a distant hillside: Peyrepertuse castle, just a short drive away.

This once mighty outpost occupies the same area as the Citadel of Carcassonne, spread across 300 metres of an 800 metre high limestone ridge, divided into three sections built or renovated at different periods.

We reached it by following a hiking trail that wound around the precipice, shaded by boxwood trees. The porter’s lodge was the sole entrance to the complex, watched over by a 120 metre long wall topped by an archer’s gallery that provided the first line of defence.

The large walled complex that made up the outer enclosure ends in a tapered spur designed to deflect projectiles. This section was home to a modest garrison, none of whom could leave Peyrepertuse without being seen by the porter — unless they slipped out a little postern gate between the latrines and the lodge, shinned down a ladder and descended a path more suitable to goats than humans.

Higher up the rock, the inner enclosure is accessed via the ‘old keep’ — the original section of the castle — which was later transformed into a church and cistern. The large open space of the inner enclosure could be used to lodge an army (in addition to the usual garrison) with all its supplies and animals.

The San Jordi keep looms over it all, accessed by the 60 carved stone steps of the Saint-Louis staircase. Wide windows with stone window seats and the remains of chimneys are signs of a shift from the Romanesque to Gothic in a more comfortable era.

Standing at the highest point, I could see Quéribus castle in the distance. These were the only two castles in the region within direct view of one another. Together they kept watch from the sea to the Pyrenees. It was said that dust stirred up by a single rider could be seen immediately, and a warning sent to the Seneschal in Carcassonne within three hours via a network of towers and castles. 

At the time of the Albigensian Crusade, Peyrepertuse was the fief of Guillaume de Peyrepertuse who was excommunicated in 1224 for refusing to submit to papal minions. He only knuckled under after Carcassonne was taken. 

Like the other castles we visited, Peyrepertuse became a French possession. It was strengthened and expanded as a border fort over the decades until the Treaty of the Pyrenees made it irrelevant. A small garrison continued to be maintained there, commanded by a junior officer, until the French Revolution when Peyrepertuse was abandoned to the birds and the cruel hand of time.

We would abandon it, too, turning our underpowered rental car back to the coast near Leucate where we spent a quiet couple hours on a breezy beach and dined on oysters in a coastal shack, harvested from the nearby farm.