Bastide de Cordes-sur-Ciel et le puits de la halle

Cordes-sur-Ciel

Perched on the Puech de Mordagne above the valley of the Cérou, Cordes is the first of the bastides of the Count of Toulouse. Raymond VII founded it in 1222, during the Albigensian Crusade, to rehouse the ruined populations and to lock down the north of his county. The first two ring walls were built in seven years; the town was to have four, pierced by gates including the Porte des Ormeaux, the Porte de la Jane, the Porte du Vainqueur and the Porte de l'Horloge. Between the end of the 13th century and the middle of the 14th, craftsmen enriched by the peace raised three-storey Gothic houses that earned Cordes its nickname of "the town of a hundred Gothic arches". The market hall and its 113-metre well, the church of Saint-Michel, the Maison du Grand Veneur and that of the Grand Fauconnier today make the town one of the most complete in the Midi.

The well of the market hall. In 1222, Raymond VII, Count of Toulouse, founded on the Puech de Mordagne a fortified bastide intended to check the advance of the northern troops come to fight the Cathars. Perched above the valley of the Cérou, Cordes prospered quickly on leather and cloth: the rich Gothic facades of the Maison du Grand Fauconnier or the Grand Veneur would earn it the nickname of "the town of a hundred Gothic arches". Beneath the 13th-century market hall opens a well cut into the rock, given as 113 metres deep, a water reserve for times of siege. It is around this well that the town's great legend took root: in 1233, three Dominican inquisitors come to hunt down heresy are said to have been massacred by the people of Cordes and thrown into the well, which supposedly earned the town an excommunication lifted only in 1321, when the consuls made honourable amends — a cross, still visible, is said to have been set on the well-head at that time. Local sources themselves present the episode as a legend: reopened in 1826, the well is said to have kept its bottom out of reach, and its mystery with it. The tradition has nonetheless left a lasting mark on the identity of the town, a refuge for Cathar families after the destruction wrought by Simon de Montfort. Today an artists' colony, Cordes inspired in Albert Camus a famous page on its evenings seen from the terraces, when the town seems suspended between heaven and earth.

Getting there : Free access to the town; tourist office on site; Musée Charles-Portal in the Porte des Ormeaux; Vindrac railway station 4.7 km away. Pedestrian upper town; car parks at the foot of the town (Porte de la Jane or Place de la Bouteillerie), climb on foot up the Grand Rue Raimond VII to the Place de la Halle. Coordinates set on the market hall and its well.

Opening times and access details are given as a guide only: check before you set out.

Ambient sound