Saint-Lizier: Two Cathedrals, a Romanesque Cloister and the Bishops' Pharmacy

Required Activities

• In the apse of the cathedral of Saint-Lizier find the 12th-century frescoes uncovered in 1960, attributed to the workshop of the Master of Pedret, a Catalan painter who worked over the mountains in the Pallars and the Val d'Aran, and the 13th-century Christ in majesty in the half-dome above them

• Walk all four galleries of the cloister — the only one still standing in the Ariège and the only one in the department with its four galleries complete — and count the thirty-eight marble columns, alternately single and double, reading the sculpture on their capitals; then find the two tombs, Auger II de Montfaucon of the 14th century, dug up here during restoration in May 1877, and Hector d'Ossun, the bishop who held the town against the Huguenots

• Go into Notre-Dame-de-la-Sède in the courtyard of the bishops' palace and look up: the painting of the end of the 15th century runs across the walls and over the vaults, restored in recent years — then work up through the four floors of the departmental museum around it, from the Roman town to daily life in the 19th century

• On the guided visit of the Hôtel-Dieu pharmacy, untouched since it opened in 1764, find the Louis XV cherry and pear woodwork running round the walls, the earthenware jars and blown-glass bottles still on the shelves, and the surgical instruments beside them — the saws and the tourniquets

• Walk round the outside of the cathedral's east end and find the Roman stone in it: three flat faces built with big Roman ashlar and antique marble robbed out of the town wall. Then follow the 740 m of Gallo-Roman rampart round the upper city, and down on the bridge over the Salat find the Gallo-Roman inscription to the goddess Belisama