Inside the choir of Sainte-Cécile cathedral Albi wasn’t an important Cathar centre but it gave its name — Albigensian — to both the heresy and the crusade that the pope launched to eradicate it. The main entrance of Sainte-Cécile cathedral The crusade was also indirectly responsible for one of the most remarkable cathedrals I’ve seen in Europe. Albi’s Cathédrale Sainte-Cécile (Photo...
Carcassonne The steep escarpment above the river Aude was first fortified by 5th century Visigoth kings, who built walls that correspond more or less to Carcasonne’s present inner circuit. It became the property of the Trencavel family, viscounts of Albi and Nîmes, in 1067. They built their imposing Château Comtal — the city’s massive inner fortress — and the church of St-Nazaire, and in 1096...
Villefranche-de-Conflent Villefranche-de-Conflent was founded as a medieval garrison town in 1092 to block incursions from Rousillon by rivals of the counts of Cerdagne. It was remodelled by the military engineer Vauban in the 17th century after the region was annexed by France. and the little town’s streets and fortifications remain largely unchanged from that time. The streets of Villefranche...
Mt. Canigou (2,785 metres) It was time to leave coastal Leucate for a new base on a hill above the town of Prades in the Pyrénées-Orientales. The looming presence of Mt. Canigou (2,785 metres) doesn’t just dominate the landscape of this region. It is the most celebrated mountain in the Catalan Pyrenees thanks to a poem by Jacint Verdaguer, the melancholy Catholic priest who walked these...
The view from Peyrepertuse castle 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...
The walls of Carcassonne One of Europe’s most brutal episodes of religious persecution happened in the south of France. It wasn’t exactly ‘France’ back then. The nation we known today is bounded by those ‘natural limits’ Cardinal Richelieu described in the 17th century: the Rhine, the Alps, the Mediterranean, the Pyrenees and the Atlantic. But in the 12th century, the Massif Central was a greater...
Did you miss our live launch conversation for A Sunny Place for Shady People? I know the start time didn’t fit everyone’s schedule. It was 1am here in Berlin — but I’m far sharper past midnight than I am in the morning, so I didn’t mind. I spoke with Jeremy Bassetti, host of the excellent Travel Writing World podcast, about: why I moved to a country I’d never been to the history of this...
Tuesday April 23 is the official publication day for my new book A Sunny Place for Shady People. It’s been a long haul from first draft to finished volume. I must have rewritten it seven or eight times as the story I set out to tell morphed into the story I had to write. I hope you’ll join me on Zoom for the online launch. I’ll be talking with Jeremy Bassetti, host of the excellent Travel...
I want to give you a rare behind-the-scenes look at what it’s like being an investigative journalist in Malta after the car bomb assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia. And so I reached out to my friend Caroline Muscat, founder and editor-in-chief of The Shift, the Maltese investigative news portal where I was a weekly columnist for over four years. If you’ve read my new book A Sunny Place...
A Sunny Place for Shady People by Ryan Murdock My new book is now available for your reading pleasure. It’s called A Sunny Place for Shady People, and it’s about six years I spent living on the island of Malta. I went there because I wanted to write an island book inspired by Lawrence Durrell — and there was light and laughter in those early years. But then there was an election, and everything...