Carcassonne for Kids - what did Carcassonne look like? who lived at Carcassonne? when was it built? why did people stop living at Carcassonne?

Carcassonne

Carcassonne, on top of a hill where you can see for miles, has always been important for any army that wanted to control southern France. It controls a crossroads where a big road from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea crosses the main road from France to Spain.

By about 500 BC, Celtic people already had a fort at Carcassonne. When the Romans conquered Gaul about 100 BC, they built a new, stronger fort. Some of that fort is still part of the castle today.

In 453 AD, the Visigoths conquered Carcassonne, and they also made it stronger. When the Umayyads conquered the Visigoths in the early 700's AD, they also conquered Carcassonne, but the Frankish king, Pippin, took it back again in 759.

The Merovingian kings gave Carcassonne to the Count of Toulouse. By 1000 AD, the Counts of Toulouse were pretty much independent of the weak French kings, and when the king told them what to do they didn't pay any attention to him.

These Counts of Toulouse decided in 1067 to build a new, stronger fort at Carcassonne to replace the old Visigothic fort. They built the inner castle, with a well inside it so they could get water without having to leave the castle, and narrow windows to shoot out of.

But by 1209 AD the French kings had gotten stronger, and they captured Carcassonne from the Counts of Toulouse. The French used Carcassonne as a main fortress to defend their border with Spain, and they built yet another wall around the outside to make it even stronger.

Here's Kidipede's movie tour of the castle of Carcassonne.

Click here for a project about castles.

To find out more about medieval castles, check out these books on Amazon.com or at your library:

Castle, by David Macaulay

Eyewitness: Castle (Eyewitness Books), by Christopher Gravett, Geoff Dann (Photographer) (2000)

Make This Model Medieval Castle (Usborne Cut-Out Models), by Iain Ashman (1997)

Caen Castle (built 1050 AD)
Tower of London (built 1070's AD)
The walls of Cairo (built 1080 AD)
Conciergerie (built 1300 AD)
Castles
Back to medieval architecture
Back to main medieval page

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