Cathar castles

The name "Cathar castle" refers to a set of medieval fortresses in France’s Languedoc region. During the 13th century, some of these sites gave shelter to Cathars who had been driven from their lands. While often associated with the Cathars, these castles are not listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site under any official designation. Many of the original structures were later replaced by new castles built by the victorious French Crusaders, and the label "Cathar castle" is also used for these later fortifications, even though they had no actual link to the Cathars.

The early part of the Crusade’s impact on these castles is recorded in the contemporary Occitan poem "Chanson de la Croisade", known in English as the "Song of the Cathar Wars (the crusade)".

True "Cathar castles" were usually part of a walled settlement called a castrum, which could range from a small village to a sizable city. On flatter ground, castles and castra were often built on nearby hills—examples include Laurac, Fanjeaux, Mas-Saintes-Puelles, and Lastours-Cabaret. In rougher terrain, they were typically perched on mountaintops, as at Montségur, Termes, and Puilaurens. Carcassonne, a fortified city on a hill overlooking the Aude River, is distinct from the Lauragais Plain, a separate agricultural region to the west.

When Catholic Crusaders captured these sites, they usually gave them to senior commanders, who replaced the local lord as master of the castle and its surroundings. The old lords—sometimes Cathar sympathisers—were dispossessed and often became refugees or guerrilla fighters known as *faidits*, an Occitan word meaning "banished" or "proscribed". The new French lords generally built themselves a modern castle, either on the site of the old one or next to it, as at Puivert. In some places, such as Carcassonne and Foix, substantial parts of the existing castles date from the Cathar period.

After the failed attempt by Viscount Raymond II Trencavel to recapture Carcassonne in 1240, the French king reinforced the Cité de Carcassonne, becoming the new master of the viscountcy. The city was heavily garrisoned not only against Cathar-sympathiser insurgents but also against the Catalans and Aragonese, since the Trencavels had been vassals of the King of Aragon, a direct descendant of Sunifred and Bello of Carcassonne.