10 Gr Grande Rue - 4 Things to Know Before Visiting

The Château de Foix is a castle in the French département of Ariège. An important tourist site, it dominates the town of Foix and was once a Cathar Castle. It is listed as a monument historique by the French Ministry of Culture. It was the home of the celebrated family of counts who became the viscount of Béarn, then kings of Navarre and kings of France.

The famous Niaux Cave is located in the northern foothills of the Pyrenees just south of the French town of Foix. It is one of Europe's most impressive Palaeolithic rock art galleries of cave paintings. There are more than two kilometres of galleries, with a hundred or more superb paintings from Magdalenian times, most of which are in the famous 'Salon Noir', 800 metres from the entrance.

The Château de Montségur is probably the best known of all Cathar Castles. It is famous as the last Cathar stronghold, which fell after a 10-month siege in 1244. A field below the hilltop castle is reputed to be the site where over 200 Cathars were burned alive, having refused to renounce their faith. The present ruin is open to the public, as is a museum in the nearby modern village of Montségur. There is an entrance fee for both.

The Grotte du Mas d'Azil is a cavity crossed by a road and by the Arize river which hollowed it out. This cavity of imposing dimensions opens into the Plantaurel massif, the commune of Mas-d'Azil, department of Ariège. It was occupied at different prehistoric and historical periods and gave its name to a prehistoric culture, the Azilian.

The Carlit peak is a metamorphic peak in the French Pyrenees located in the Carlit massif. It is the highest point in the Pyrénées-Orientales department with an altitude of 2,921 meters. Its name comes from the massif in which it is located. The cold sub-oceanic climate brings many disturbances and a lasting winter snow cover above 2000 meters from November to April.

The Bouillouses lake is an artificial lake with an area of 149 ha of the Pyrenees, in Haut-Conflent in the Pyrénées-Orientales. The lake has a capacity of 19,000,000 m 3 and is full annually in summer, and often almost empty at the end of winter. Lac des Bouillouses is very famous in the fishing industry. It includes brown trout common in Europe, arctic char, and rainbow trout.