Gates of Cité de Carcassonne

The Cité de Carcassonne is built up the top of a hill along the River Aude. The area here is pretty flat so the hill made the perfect place to build a fortress. And what a fortress did they build. The Cité de Carcassonne is Europe’s largest walled city, with the qualifier that the walls are still intact. Indeed, the walls of the Cité de Carcassonne are very much intact and look very imposing to any visitor. The walls can be clearly seen from town and certainly by enemies. To visit or attack the Cité de Carcassonne, one would need to walk up the hill.

The hill isn’t really that high but it probably provides the residents of the fortress a lot of time ti prepare for attacks. That is if they would even get through the city walls. Getting in and out of the Cité de Carcassonne, people would be passing through some imposing gates. The gates themselves are defensive structures with holes for archers. Even the walls of the citadel have holes for defense. Attackers would have to have very good archers to be able to invade this place. Curiously though, the main gate of the citadel didn’t have a door, maybe there was no need for it anymore. Any invaders would probably have been already killed.

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