The story of this place
Perched on a dizzying 1,200-metre rock spur in the Pyrenean foothills, the fortress of Montségur became the last great stronghold of the Cathars, a dualist Christian sect declared heretical and hunted in the Albigensian Crusade. After a Cathar raiding party murdered inquisitors in 1242, royal and Church forces laid siege to Montségur for ten grueling months. When it finally fell in March 1244, more than 200 Cathars who refused to renounce their faith were burned alive at the foot of the mountain, in a field still called the Prat dels Cremats—the Field of the Burned. The ruined citadel, wreathed in legend and rumours of a Cathar 'treasure', broods over the valley still.