A storybook fortress of turrets and double walls
La Cité de Carcassonne looks exactly as a medieval fortress should, with two rings of walls, conical-roofed towers and a castle at its heart. Much of what you see was restored in the 19th century by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, and the result is a UNESCO site that draws huge crowds by day. Come in the evening, when the lanes empty and the walls are floodlit. Below the hill, the Bastide Saint-Louis is the lived-in lower town, and the Canal du Midi passes nearby.