A taste of the Languedoc, France

For now, Languedoc remains that rarest and most precious of places: a corner of western Europe filled with great natural beauty, superb wines and a long and fascinating history that has somehow escaped the notice of the world's tourist hordes. Property in the Languedoc too is still very affordable.

It's all the more surprising since Languedoc has an abundance of the things we love about Provence: a sun-baked Mediterranean climate, fields of sunflowers and fragrant lavender, rocky villages with red-tile roofs, even leafy parks where old men gather to play boules (although they call it petanque here.)

Here you can still hear people speaking Occitan, the language of the troubadors, and catch glimpses of the mountaintop redoubts of the Cathars, a tragic band of medieval heretics who have been the obsession of everyone from Pope Innocent III to Adolph Hitler to New Age occultists.

Eclipsed by Provence, bereft (with a couple of notable exceptions) of A-list attractions and lacking its own Van Gogh - or its own Mayle - to sing its praises, Languedoc has never achieved the tourism cachet of its neighbor.

Montpellier, its chief city, has the Place de la Comedie, the main square, where mimes and jugglers were entertaining crowds of young university students. The square was rimmed with inviting cafes, flower shops and Haussmann-designed buildings that gave it the look of a miniature Paris.

Montpellier is France's eighth-largest city, it has the oldest medical school in Europe - Nostradamus studied there - and, I'm slightly embarrassed to admit, I'd never even heard of the place until I booked a flight there.

It also has the world's boldest - and, in some critics' view, most misguided - efforts at urban renewal. The brainchild of Georges Freche, Montpellier's longtime socialist mayor, Antigone is a city within a city, a mix of offices, shops and moderate-income housing constructed in the early 1980s on a grand, pseudoclassical scale. Oversized arches and columns the size of giant sequoias were meant to evoke a "New Rome," but to me it had a totalitarian, Albert Speerish feel about it.

One can hear men conversing in a strange tongue.Ask them what they are speaking,and they will reply- "C'est Occitan," It is the ancient language of the region, a cousin of Catalan from nearby Spain. (Languedoc, or langue d'oc, literally means "the language of Occitan.") An echo from the Middle Ages, this was the language of the troubadors, a band of wandering Languedoc poets and musicians who literally sang for their suppers with verses of courtly, unrequited love aimed at the wives of noblemen. Like most minority languages, Occitan has been officially suppressed over the centuries, but you can still hear it spoken in villages far off the main highways.

The Cathar story. During the Middle Ages, they were widely rumored to possess the Holy Grail; it supposedly was smuggled out of their castle at Montsegur shortly before it fell to the crusaders. Throughout history, they have been linked with the Knights Templars, Freemasons and, in recent years, even UFOs. Hitler was said to have been obsessed with the Cathars. In a scene straight out of "Raiders of the Lost Ark," he dispatched a team of SS archaeologists to scour the Montsegur ruins. What, if anything, they found is unknown. (And whether it happened at all is a matter of dispute among historians.)

To this day, the Cathars continue to raise strong passions on both sides. Even the Singing Nun got into it, praising the crusade against the heretics in her 1963 novelty hit, "Dominique."

A living remnant of the Middle Ages exists in the form of the fairy-tale city of Carcassonne. Begun by the Gauls and then conquered and enlarged by, in turn, the Romans, Visigoths, Moors and Franks (under the command of Pepin the Short), Carcassonne was a major fortress controlling the plains of southwest France between the Mediterranean and the Pyrenees. By the mid-1800s, though, it had become a half-abandoned slum and was in danger of being torn down. In stepped architect Viollet-le-Duc, who began a restoration job on the crumbling ramparts and turrets that his successors continued until the 1930s.

The result is a perfect medieval walled city - too perfect, in some critics' eyes. Guided more by a sense of romanticism than a strict adherence to history, the restorers added some fanciful touches, like the blue-slate conical tops to the towers that are more typical of northern France than Languedoc. Still, it's a heart-stopping sight. Chances are, if you've ever seen a medieval castle in a Hollywood film, such as Kevin Costner's "Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves," it was Carcassonne.

There's no admission charge - it's a regular town, inhabited by about 700 people. (The "newer" city of Carcassonne, the Ville Basse, founded in the late 1200s across the River Aude at the bottom of the hill, is called Carcassonne's "ugly stepsister" by some guidebooks, but I found it quite picturesque and appealing.)

While beautiful, virtually every aspect of Carcassonne represents state-of-the-art medieval military technology: The round towers had no corners to batter, and the fortifications were set up so that any attackers who managed to penetrate the outer wall would face an unrelenting rain of arrows, stones and hot oil pouring down from defenders atop the inner wall.

Wine, also, is very important to the region. The big story in wine circles in recent years has been the ascendancy of Languedoc wines. Focusing on sun-loving grapes that thrive in the pebbly, arid soil, such as syrah, grenache, mourvedre, carignan and cinsault, winemakers in Corbieres and Minervois are now producing big, bold, spicy reds, similar to the best Cotes du Rhones.

The towns and small villages along the Canal du Midi are one of the biggest attractions in the Languedoc with: the hilltop city of Beziers and the somnolent villages of Poirhes, Colombiers, Le Somail and, most of all, Capestang. Old men playing petanque in the midday heat, women squeezing tomatoes at vegetable stands, stubble-faced winemakers selling bottles from what looked like roadside lemonade stands .

There is warmth from the people as well as many days of sunshine that inspired many artists to settle in the region and draw inspiration from the landscape and clarity of the light. It is now very easy to get to the Languedoc - come soon and see for yourself how appealing the area will be for all your senses.

Author: Michael Bowditch,
Property Buying guide for the Aude, Languedoc

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