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The Lastours castles
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Imaginary map of the underground passages in Luc Alberny's novel "Le glaive sur le monde"
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THE CITY'S UNDERGROUND PASSAGES
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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.
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Young Cassagnol at the big well, drawing by Albert Robida |
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