Photos

During my short journey in Toulouse a few weeks ago (a time of sunny weather, it looks it was a long time ago now !), I had a day in the north of Toulouse, around Albigenses area and Aveyron canyons. The area has an incredible number of nice villages. The most known is Cordes-sur-Ciel, in river Cérou valley. It is very well preserved and its steep and sinous streets give it a lot of charm. It is considered as one of the most beautiful villages in France. To my opinon, it is the most beautiful one I could see in France !

Here is a short resume about History of the city, pasted from Cordes-sur-Ciel official website :

The building of the city by the Count of Toulouse Raimond VII, is linked to the Albigenses crusade launched at the beginning of the thirteenth century against the Cathars. Cordes was the first and most important "fortified bastide" (new town), which was founded to accommodate the people hardly hit by the war and to show to advantage the territory. It will go through an outstanding growth. The primitive bastide goes beyond the first wall and new lines of fortifications were needed (5 totally). At the end of the thirteenth century, three generations later, it will become a city of more than 5,500 residents. Its prosperity is mainly due to industries, trade and finance.

During the city golden age period (1280-1350), magnificent Gothic palaces, which make Cordes so famous nowadays, were built by noble families and rich merchants. From 1562 to 1625, the religious wars cause continual alarms. The fortified city, considered as the strongest position of the Albigenses, is highly coveted by the Huguenots. In the fourteenth century, plague epidemics exhaust the city and at the end of the seventeenth century, the construction of the Canal du Midi turns upside down major trading roads and leads to its commercial collapse. Cordes counts only 2,500 residents then.

Yet the city will go through two rebirths. First economical, as from 1870, with the mechanical embroidery industry brought back from St. Gall, Switzerland, by Albert Gorsse (from Cordes); then artistic, with the painter Yves Brayer and a group of artists who joined him in Cordes during the Second World War.

1993, Cordes became Cordes-sur-Ciel.

This photo was taken from Saint-Michel square. It show you Saint-Michel church, built from 13th to 15th century. Not very easy to take photos in such villages : the streets are narrow and the light is very hard to master because of big constrats between sun and shadow.

To finish this note, a few words by the french writer Albert Camus who fell in love with the village when he visited it in the 50s : «We travel for years without much know what we are looking for, we wander in noise, tangled with desires or regrets and suddenly we reach one of those two or three places that await all of us in this world. We reach it and the heart finally falls silent, we discover that we arrived. The traveller who, from the terrace of Cordes, looks at the summer night knows then that he does not need to go further and, if he wishes, the beauty here, day after day, will remove him from any loneliness.»