Cl. Michel Jordy, © B.M. Carcassonne  
The Lastours castles



 
Cl. Service historique de l'Armée de Terre, Château de Vincennes.  
Imaginary map of the underground
passages in Luc Alberny's novel
"Le glaive sur le monde"
 
THE ETERNAL FORTRESS
THE CITY'S UNDERGROUND PASSAGES
Private Collection
La fiancée des ténèbres, poster, 1944
The city's underground passages, which are often walled over or have collapsed, are, for the most part, invisible. However, here and there, a few supposed or real entrances give them substance and encourage flights of imagination.

An anonymous XIIIth Century chronicle gives an account of an underground passage connecting the city with the four Lastours castles in the Cabardès. There is a grotto beneath one of them called "Trou de la Cité". Oral tradition also relates that the Visigoths hid treasure in the big well and that at its bottom, there are doors to vast subterranean passages and fantastic fairy caverns. In reality all that researchers have found is a few galleries and rooms such as a vaulted room beneath the Place Marcou. The heroine of the film "La fiancée des Tenèbres" descends into the city's underground caves in search of the Grail.
 

       

 
 History Revisited
 War Games :
 The Children
 War Games :
 Illuminations
 The City's Underground
 Passages
 
  Young Cassagnol at
the big well, drawing
by Albert Robida
  In Le trésor de carcassonne