Platanes de la Liberté de Caunes-Minervois

Caunes-Minervois

Caunes owes its renown to its incarnat marble, pink and red veined with white, quarried nearby since Antiquity and laid at Versailles; its Place de la République owes its shade to two planes that are more than two centuries old. The tourist office dates them to 1792, 'official ONF dating'; that is the year when, France having entered the war, plantings of trees of Liberty multiplied in every commune, more than sixty thousand according to Abbé Grégoire. They have been christened Danton and Robespierre. Danton, on the north side of the square, measured 6.40 m in girth in 2018; Robespierre, whose trunk has been filled with concrete, exceeds 7 m, according to a forester from the Vosges who came to see them that year. Pruned regularly for a long time, they have lost their natural habit; saddled with such names, the same visitor remarks, they could only lose their heads. The plane was not the usual species for trees of Liberty, where the poplar dominated in 1792; but in the Midi it was already the tree of the squares, and its longevity explains why these two count among the rare survivors of the first wave, when most were uprooted at the Restoration. Between them, a modern fountain of red marble bears a sentence by Jean Jaurès on the Republic. The two trees are alive; in 2017, the A.R.B.R.E.S. association awarded them the Arbre remarquable de France label.

Grand Carcassonne Tourisme — Platanes de la place de la République ↗

Getting there : Caunes-Minervois is north of Carcassonne, by the D 620; the Place de la République is in the centre of the village, a stone's throw from the abbey, and the planes can be seen at all times. The Benedictine abbey can be visited; the red marble quarries are four kilometres to the north-east. A half-day stop allows one to see the village, the abbey and the square.

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

Ambient sound