Carcassonne walking tour & city guide

La Cité

People have fortified this hill since Roman times, but the walls you see today were largely built in the 12th and 13th centuries. By the 19th century they were crumbling, and the architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc restored them, adding the pointed slate roofs on the towers that some critics still debate.

You enter through the Porte Narbonnaise, between two massive towers. Inside, narrow cobbled lanes lead to the Château Comtal, the castle of the counts, where you can walk part of the ramparts, and to the Basilica of Saint-Nazaire, with beautiful stained glass windows.

The lower town

Across the Old Bridge over the Aude, the Bastide Saint-Louis is the lower town, laid out in a grid in the 13th century. Its central square, Place Carnot, has a fountain of Neptune and hosts a market, and the Canal du Midi passes just to the north by the train station.

A classic walk through Carcassonne

Start at Place Carnot in the lower town and walk across the Old Bridge for the classic view of the fortress. Climb up to the Porte Narbonnaise, explore the lanes of La Cité, the Château Comtal and the Basilica of Saint-Nazaire.

Then walk the lices, the grassy space between the two rings of walls, before heading back down. The walk is about 4 kilometers.

Visiting tips

La Cité is busy in summer, so arrive early in the morning or stay into the evening, when the walls are lit up. The Bastille Day fireworks over the fortress on 14 July are famous. Toulouse is about an hour away by train.