You wind up your catapult and begin heaving big stones at the outer walls, but the stones just bounce off the rounded walls of the 20 towers, as does the battering ram. Such weapons would have crashed through the square towers of northern France, where round towers disappeared during the Dark Ages, being rebuilt only when returning Crusaders brought the style north with them. Here in the south, the knack of making round towers had survived the departure of their Roman designers. The walls are much thicker at the bottom – try breaking through 13 feet of mortar and stone! If you manage to breach these walls, you’ll find these outer towers open to the inner walls, providing no shelter from the arrows of the defenders. Now you’ll have to cross the barren lists to attack the inner walls.

As you try to batter or mine through or tunnel under the inner walls or raise ladders, you’ll be under a constant hail of arrows flying from the walls. The spacing of the towers depends on when they were built; Roman towers were spaced closer due to the limited range of the javelin and catapult bolt, while medieval towers are farther apart due to the greater range of the crossbow. There’s nowhere to hide – at least one archer can see you, no matter where you are. While your arrows only rarely fly into the narrow arrow slits, inside the towers the slits are built into wedge-shaped recesses which let the defenders shoot arrows across a wide arc. Above you, more archers can hide behind the tooth-shaped, or "crenellated," battlements while shooting down on you. As if that isn’t bad enough, there are wooden extensions on top of the walls (now missing) which allow the defenders to drop hot pitch, oil and lead on you. Ouch!

If you’re hoping for a break when the soldiers step away to eat or rest, you’re out of luck. Each of the towers could be garrisoned by up to 200 soldiers and was equipped with a cistern to catch rain water and fireplaces for heat and to cook food. Even if the tower is isolated in the course of the battle, the soldiers can still hold out a good long while.

If you manage to break through both rings of walls, you’ll be starting over again at the innermost layer of Carcassonne’s defenses. In the heart of the fortifications, on the western side of La Cité, is Chateau Comtal, the Count’s Castle. Once again you’ll find forbidding walls, lofty towers, and an easily defended dry moat distancing the castle from the town. (Here, the wooden rampart extensions on top of the walls have been restored.)

Lucky you! Today Carcassonne welcomes its camera-toting invaders!

The basic theme of Carcassonne’s fortifications is "concentric." There’s one imposing set of outer walls, divided by an open space from an equally imposing set of inner walls, within which is a fortified castle, the last resort of defenders forced to surrender the outer and inner fortifications. Each of these three rings of fortifications is formidable. The outer walls are nearly two miles around – imagine the effort and expense that went into such a massive building project!

Once cannons made castle fortifications obsolete, Carcassonne’s walls fell into disrepair. At one point, portions of the wall were sold off for quarrying by local builders. However, in the mid-1800s the city’s historical worth was recognized, and Eugène Viollet-le-Duc was commissioned to restore the walls and towers. His controversial renovation was rather more picturesque and imaginative than strictly historical. For example, the slate-tiled cones on the towers are typical of northern, not southern, France; the original towers would have had flat roofs.

The little train trundles along the "moat," which was never intended to hold water – it’s actually called "the lists." The purpose of this flat, barren, sunken interval between the outer walls and the inner walls was to provide an unprotected no-man’s-land which would have to be crossed by invaders who managed to breach the outer walls and which would make it difficult to push siege weapons up against the walls or scale the walls with ladders. During peaceful interludes, the lists were used for jousting practice by resident knights. In the centuries during which the fortifications were no longer manned or maintained, townspeople built ramshackle houses in the lists which were only cleared out in the 1850s when the fortifications were renovated.

Continued in the next entry…