Lagrasse: The Abbey Under Charlemagne's Protection

Required Activities

• Find the two separate doors into the same abbey — it was sold off in two lots at the Revolution and has never been put back together, so the medieval half belongs to the Aude department and the rest to a community of canons — then go into the public half for the private chapel abbot Auger de Gogenx had built in 1296, with its upper and lower chapels, and look at where the plain medieval masonry runs straight into the 18th-century classical work in flamed ochre sandstone

• Spend an hour in the half of the abbey that is now a working cultural centre — the bookshop and literary bistro that Les arts de lire has run in the departmental wing since spring 2008 — and pick one thing off the shelves written about the Corbières or the Cathar wars to read in the courtyard

• Cross the Orbieu on the Pont-Vieux, recorded from 1303, and look at the piers: each once carried a tower, both pulled down in 1618 because they were threatening to bring the bridge down. On the far bank walk the bastide grid to the 14th-century covered market hall, listed in 1937, the porte de l'Eau in the remains of the ramparts, and the Gothic church of Saint-Michel, listed in 1925; several of the old houses have turned out to have medieval painted ceilings