If there is a sacred place, a place that speaks to the heart of those for whom these distant times have remained alive like memories clinging to soul and body, it is this mount and this château.
for the King of France
At the end of the XIIIth century, the old fortified village (castrum) of Montségur, which had been home to the Cathar community from 1204 to 1244, was dismantled. It then gave way to the construction of a fortress commissioned by the King of France. Against a backdrop of war and crusade against the King of Aragon, the fortress was to complete a network of fortresses on the kingdom’s Pyrenean border.
The construction project was carried out with the support of the King of France Philippe le Bel and the Lord of Montségur, Guy III de Lévis-Mirepoix. Occupied by a small garrison of around 15 men, the fortress was ultimately never attacked. It was abandoned in the first half of the 17th century by the lord of Lévis-Mirepoix before the destruction of fortresses by Richelieu and the Treaty of the Pyrenees.