Cathar castles
Cathar castles (French: Châteaux cathares) is a term used by the French tourist industry. It is used for castles in Languedoc-Roussillon that were usually built by the enemies of the Cathars during the Albigensian Crusade.
True Cathar castles
The Cathars built fortified homesteads, not castles. The legend of Cathar architects and builders is no more than a myth. The Cathars did not build castles and so the only ones that can claim the description "Cathar" are small castles, which are often totally unknown to the public. Their unspectacular ruins are often far away from tourist routes.
Royal citadels
Because Raimond II was unable to recapture Carcassonne in 1240, the city walls were strengthened by the French king, who also destroyed small castra in the Corbières region and built citadels to protect the border with the Kingdom of Aragon.
The five castles are often called the cinq fils de Carcassonne (five sons of Carcassonne):
Those fortresses resisted various assaults, led by the Aragonese Army.
Abandonment of the citadels
In 1659, Kings Louis XIV of France and the Philip IV of Spain signed the Treaty of the Pyrenees. The French king also married the Infanta Marie Therese. The treaty changed the border by giving Rousillon to France and moving the border southward to the crest of the Pyrenees, where it reamains. The fortresses, therefore, lost their importance.
Some maintained a garrison for a while, a few until the French Revolution, but they slowly fell into decay and often becoming sherpherds' shelters or bandits' hideouts.
Other "Cathar castles"
Sources and further reading
AUÉ, Michèle; (trans. Pleasance, Simon) (1992). Discover Cathar Country. Vic-en-Bigorre, France: MSM. ISBN 2-907899-44-9.
Cathar Castles Media
Château de Quéribus (France)
Lastours castles (13th century)
