Peyrepertuse

Listen first to the wind. Up here it comes hard across the ridge, pulling at your jacket and whistling through gaps in the stone. Under your feet the limestone is pale and worn smooth in places, rough and sharp in others. Ahead of you, a wall seems to grow straight out of the cliff, so closely matched to the rock that it is hard to say where nature stops and masonry begins. This is Peyrepertuse, high above the village of Duilhac-sous-Peyrepertuse.

The castle sits on a long, narrow limestone ridge in the Corbières, the dry, rugged hill country of southern France between Carcassonne and the Pyrenees. The ridge rises to roughly eight hundred metres, and the fortress runs along almost its entire spine. From the valley below, the walls look like a ship stranded on top of a wave of rock. Some writers have called it the celestial Carcassonne, a castle city in the sky. Once you stand here, the name makes sense.

The name itself is old. In the local Occitan language, Peyrepertuse means something close to pierced rock. Occitan is the historic language of southern France, related to Catalan, and you still see it on road signs in this region. Nobody can say for certain which hole in the rock gave the place its name. But walk around the ridge and you will notice caves, cracks and openings in the cliffs. The mountain was full of holes long before anyone built on it.

To understand why a castle was built in such a hard place, think about borders. In the Middle Ages, this ridge stood close to the frontier between the kingdom of France and the lands of the Crown of Aragon to the south. For centuries, local lords held these heights and shifted their loyalties between powerful neighbours. A fortress up here could watch the valleys, control the roads and send signals to other castles. Height was protection, but height was also information.

In the early thirteenth century, this region was shaken by the Albigensian Crusade. This was a war launched against the Cathars, a Christian movement the Catholic Church declared heretical, and against the southern lords who tolerated them. The war became a conquest of the south by northern French barons and, later, the French crown. Peyrepertuse is often called a Cathar castle today. It is fairer to say it was a castle of the southern nobility, caught in that conflict.

The local lord, Guillaume de Peyrepertuse, resisted the crusaders for years. In 1240 he joined a failed uprising led by Raymond Trencavel, heir of the old viscounts of Carcassonne. When the revolt collapsed, Guillaume submitted, and the castle passed to the French king. From then on, Peyrepertuse was no longer a local stronghold. It became a royal fortress, one of a chain of frontier castles guarding the new southern edge of France.

As you move through the site, you will notice it is really two castles in one. The lower castle, at the eastern end, is the older part. Its walls follow the narrow point of the ridge like the bow of a ship. Inside are the remains of a keep, living quarters, cisterns for storing rainwater and a small church dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Look at the shape of the enclosure — it bends to fit the rock rather than forcing the rock to fit a plan.

The higher part, at the western end, is called San Jordi, the Catalan form of Saint George. This upper fortress was built after the castle came under royal control, during the reign of Louis the Ninth, the French king later made a saint. It stands on the highest point of the ridge. To reach it, you climb a steep stairway cut directly into the rock. Visitors call it the stairway of Saint Louis, and it is the most memorable climb on the site.

Take that staircase slowly. The steps are uneven and polished by countless boots, and on windy days a handrail becomes your best friend. Here is a detail many visitors miss. The stairway is not only a path, it is a defence. Anyone climbing it had to move in single file, exposed to the walls above. Even today, as you climb, you can feel how vulnerable an attacker would have been on these narrow steps.

In 1258, the Treaty of Corbeil settled the border between France and Aragon, and Peyrepertuse stood guard along it for about four centuries. The real change came in 1659 with the Treaty of the Pyrenees. That agreement moved the frontier south to the mountain crest and gave the region of Roussillon to France. Suddenly the castle was no longer on the edge of anything. Its garrison shrank, its purpose faded, and slowly the wind and weather took over.

Now turn and look out. On a clear day the views from San Jordi run in every direction. To the south, on another rocky summit, you may be able to make out the castle of Quéribus, one of Peyrepertuse's frontier partners. Beyond it, the line of the Pyrenees rises, often with snow in the cooler months. To the east, in very clear weather, some visitors catch a pale line of the Mediterranean. Below you, vineyards and scrub cover the folded hills.

That scrub is part of the experience. The Corbières is garrigue country, a word for the low, fragrant Mediterranean brush of thyme, rosemary and box. On a warm day the smell rises off the slopes as you walk up from the car park. Lizards dart across the hot stones. Birds of prey often hang in the air currents along the cliffs. The castle feels empty of people, but it is not empty of life.

Before you leave, stand still for a moment near the outer wall. Put your hand on the stone. It is the same limestone as the ridge, cut and stacked by people who worked here without machines, carrying every block up this slope. Then look down at the red roofs of Duilhac far below. As you walk back down the path, turn around once. From a little distance, the walls fade back into the rock, and the ridge looks almost like a mountain again.