Niaux: Prehistoric Cave Art

One of our most memorable trips has been to Niaux, a large cave in the in the steep foothills of the Pyrenees Mountains that contains amazing prehistoric artworks. There are actually many caves containing prehistoric art in this part of France, but most are now closed to visitors. Niaux is one of the few that can still be seen.

In order to preserve the art, small groups of twenty are allowed to enter with a guide. The entrance to the cave is in a sheer cliff high above the Vicdessos River. Using only flashlights, we hiked about 900 meters back into the unlighted cavern. The most remarkable part of the tour is the Black Chamber, whose walls are covered with beautiful and highly detailed images of prehistoric animals -- bison, horses, and ibex -- painted in red and black. These drawings date from the Magdalenien Period of the Late Stone Age, meaning that they were created about 12,000 years ago. It is difficult to imagine our ancestors working their way so deep into the cave complex by simple torchlight in order to create these incredible red and black drawings.
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(The pictures of art from inside the cave weren't made by us since photography is not permitted in order to preserve the delicate works.)

Fontfroide

Another day trip, another abbey. This time we drove east through the vineyards of Corbieres to the Cistercian abbey of Fontfroide. Our tour gave us a look not only at the cloister and church, but also a behind-the-scenes glimpse of life for the lay brothers, dining in the refectory, and cooking in the kitchen.
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St-Martin-des-Puits

One of the most moving places we have visited is the remote rural chapel of St-Martin-des-Puits. It is located in a steep, wooded river valley, along the side of a rutted one-lane country road. The rectangular choir of this tiny building is pre-Romanesque, divided from the 11th-century nave by a horseshoe-shaped Visigothic arch supported by a pair marble columns taken from an unknown Roman site. The choir is decorated by magnificent but badly damaged 12-century frescoes.

The entire structure is rapidly deteriorating. There is no glass in the windows, so the interior (including the fragile frescos) stands exposed to the weather. The chapel is hauntingly beautiful and slowly disappearing.

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Toulouse: Augustinian Museum

A second trip to Toulouse took us to a museum of medieval art housed in a former Augustinian monastery dated from the early 1300s. The museum is especially noteworthy for its collection of medieval sculpture -- tomb covers, free-standing figures, and the carved capitals from 12th and 13th-century columns.

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Vals: The Tabby Tour

Vals is a mere speck on the map, a cluster of a dozen farmhouses on a one-lane road about 10 km west of Mirepoix. It is the site of a very strange and incredibly ancient subterranean church. You enter the pre-Roman crypt through a spooky cave-like opening in the solid rock, then climb through an interior divided into separate chambers on three different ascending levels. There are even more surprises in the form of 11th and 12th-century frescos on the ceiling vaults.

We were privileged to take a special Tabby Tour of the premises. Susie befriended a lovely mottled cat in the churchyard. The cat proceeded to lead us through the passageway into the church and then gave us a tour of the entire structure. Our feline guide skipped from one dark room to the next, expertly taking us into every nook and cranny, before leading us back out into the warm sunshine.
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Mirepoix

The village of Mirepoix suffered a massacre of its Cathar residents at the hands of the Crusaders and was later ravaged by a flood. The exisiting village dates from its re-establishment as a "bastide" in the year 1290. It is famous for its town square which is surrounded by broad covered walkways in front of handome timber-frame houses. The ends of the beams supporting the 14th-century Council House feature 150 carved wooden heads, each one a work of art in its own right.
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Narbonne, Lagrasse, and Carnival in Limoux

Jan, Susie, and Steve took a number of short day trips throughout Languedoc. One was to the small coastal town of Narbonne, once a Roman provincial capital and a medieval trade center. We loved strolling through the streets and visiting the unfinished Gothic cathedral and a fine archeological museum with exhibits dating from the Stone Age through the Gallo-Roman period. We also drove to the walled village of Lagrasse to visit the abbey and its small museum devoted to the works of the medieval sculptor known as the Master of Cabestany, whose masterpiece we had seen at the abbey of St-Hilaire.

A high point of our trip was the chance to experience a little bit of the pre-Lenten revelry during the annual Carnival celebrations at Limoux. In the weeks before Lent, the town square is the site of music, comedy, and dancing by various troupes of masked celebrants.
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