Inside the Walls of Cité de Carcassonne

The Cité de Carcassonne is the largest walled city in Europe. I would most likely believe that seeing as to how large this place looks like. The UNESCO World Heritage site listed citadel is built on top of a hill overlooking the town. I was suprised to just walk in through the gates of the citadel. I would have expected it to be more difficult to enter. The Cité de Carcassonne apparently has a few layers of walls of protection. Upon entering the gates, I noticed that there was a gap in between the first wall and the second wall. This is probably a normal defensive architecture, after all you don’t want the enemies to just cross a single wall to get in.

The more important structures of the citadel are obviously within the inner walls. There is some space between the walls. I can imagine that the first wall would be the most heavily defended one. That would explain the space to accommodate more defenders of the fortress. Since the citadel is quite high up, I would expect that projectiles would be widely used. Arrows would have been a primary weapon of choice here. While the swords would be for close quarters combat.

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