Villefranche is downstairs and Fort Liberia is up.
Villefranche is a fortified medieval city and Fort Liberia is a Vauban construction.
Villefranche-de-Conflent is at the crossroads of three valleys, which well deserved the construction of the fort to watch over the whole after the Treaty of the Pyrenees.
The village and the fort are connected by an underground staircase known as the "1,000 steps", but there are in fact only 734 of them.
This is a world record!
Two hundred and fifty workers worked there from 1850 and twenty-two gave their lives.
And the Church of Saint James
"Villefranche is located on a secondary pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela; its Romanesque parish church (with a Gothic bell tower) is dedicated to Saint James. The two portals on the façade feature remarkable Romanesque capitals, works from the Saint Michel de Cuxa workshop, decorated with exotic animals and fantastical creatures of Eastern inspiration. To the left of the main portal, the standards for the units of measurement used by the cloth market that was held in the square still remain. The interior houses a wealth of furnishings, including a recumbent Christ, a Saint Peter, and a set of Gothic choir stalls, as well as numerous Renaissance and Baroque altarpieces, including one by the great Catalan sculptor Joseph Sunyer."
In the summer tens of thousands of visitors pass through this corner of French Catalonia, while in the winter the town has only 239 inhabitants.
This small community is mainly animated by the Mené family.
There is the father, Pierre, who was awarded the concession of the fort for 99 years and then Joël, the son, a volunteer fireman, coffee maker, guide and chief animator of Villefranche.
In 1960 André Hunebelle came to the city to shoot many scenes from the film "Le bossu" with Bourvil.
www.villefranchedeconflent.com/
www.villefranchedeconflent.fr/
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator
(free version)
