Renowned Sanctuaries - Aude Pays Cathare

Designed to provide havens of peace in a holistic world, these abbeys are not only architectural buildings made from wood and stone but also symbols of an idel religious life dedicated to prayer.  They were also major landowners and importnt centres of economic activity.   As burial places for local lords, guardians of religious relics, places of worship and centres of pilgrimage, these religious
establishments played an important role in the artistic and culturl development of the Pays d'Aude.   The Aude deprtment along with the Pyrenees - Orientales, is now home to the largest number of abbeys in the Languedoc Roussillion region.

Around the year 1000, a new blossoming of monastic reform was accompanied by a revolution in technique and style.   Born in  Northern Italy and quickly adopted by the major abbeys in Catalonia and Roussillion, the Romanesque style spread to all areas of former Septimania via the Upper Aude Valley and the Corbieres mountains.  The style was distinguished by the way in which the stone was cut and assembled, by the use of simple decoration and by the play of alternating lines of light and dark material.  This period is also characterised by the construction of semi-cicular apses, known as
"cul-de-four" barrel vaults, and wall decoration in the form of strips and arcades referred to as
"Lombard style".  It was also during  that daring architectural innovations allowed wider naves to bbe built in order to house the growing number of pilgrims coming to worship holy relics such as the piece of the True Cross at Sainte -Marie d'Alet, the body of St Berenger in Saint-Papoul, sais the provoke miracles, and the body of Carcassonne's Bishop Hilaire in the church of Saint Hilaire.


Camite Departemental du Tourismus de l'Aude

T:   0033 4 68 11 66 00

F:  0033 4 68 11  68 00

E:   documentation@audetourisme.com

W:   www.audetourisme.com