Our first visit to Narbonne

Can you believe we have lived here for four years now and hadn't visited the main towns for our and our neighbouring departments? Up until now that is, when we decided it was about time we went to see Narbonne! We were lucky that it coincided with the Christmas decorations, which were done extremely well and were fun to see, adding to a thoroughly enjoyable day out.

There's plenty to see in Narbonne, which is only a smallish town (pop. about 53,000). It has a lot of Roman history so there is a large museum representing the town as it was during those times, which we will go to another time, plus another out of town Roman pottery production site.

We found free parking by the Canal de la Robine, only a short walk from the covered market, les Halles, which we headed to first.

The covered market, called Les Halles, built of steel and glass in the Baltard style have been open every day for the last 112 years! It was a busy place and jam packed around the eateries.

The fish and shellfish stalls interested me the most. I have never seen such a display of different sized prawns, lobsters, crayfish and shellfish before, nor have I ever seen such high prices! They can surely only sell to Michelin starred restaurants and billionaires!

Outside the market was a fun fair, making photography of the market building a bit challenging. It was nicely scenic having the canal in the middle of the town, and you can just see in the bottom left photo (click to make it bigger) that there is a lock there in the centre of town.

It was a mild day so we actually ate outside and were quite warm in the sun. This is the third Christmas-time out of four that my brother has brought us a warm day for eating outdoors! The fourth missed year was when he couldn't come at the last minute due to covid restrictions, not due to the weather.

This bridge below is the 'Pont des Marchands', a bridge with shops on it. A bit of a shame that the buildings look very modernised as the bridge itself dates back to the Roman era, when the river Aude actually flowed through here. Now the other spans of the bridge have disappeared into the adjoining buildings which have of course changed over the centuries. The water level, due to the locks, is also several metres higher than it would have been which hides more of the bridge.

The gothic front facade of the Palais des Archevêques or Bishops' Palace, with the keep on the left hand side covered in wonderful decorations! The Palace contains two museums which we didn't have time to visit, maybe one day!

Where the red platform is located is where a portion of the ancient Roman road the Via Domitia has been excavated and left open for everyone to see. This ancient road linked Italy to Spain. It was a shame we couldn't see it, but we will be back to visit the Roman museum so we can see it then.

On the left below is the entrance to the Pont des Marchands. There are some fabulous buildings in central Narbonne - I am particularly fond of the style with the decorative metal balconies.

From here on my phone battery got very low so the following photos are all Keith's.

After lunch we headed for the Horreum, an existing part of the Roman city. Horreum means warehouses or grainstores in Latin, and these underground tunnels and store rooms have survived largely intact, in fact were in private use for centuries so not really properly discovered and studied until the 20th century. They were classed as a Historic Monument in 1961 and opened to the public in 1976.

The map below shows the outline of the Roman city over the present day town of Narbonne, with the forum in red and the Horreum being the L shaped thing beneath it. The Pont des Marchands is the bridge shown spanning the Aude river, which is now the Canal de la Robine. Presumably the river was rerouted down another branch of it when the canal was created, as it no longer flows near Narbonne.

After this we visited the medieval cathedral (Cathédrale Saint-Just-et-Saint-Pasteur de Narbonne) which is tall from the outside, but you don't notice just how astonishingly tall it is until you go inside... and strain your neck looking up! It was quite incredible. Also I have never seen a church or cathedral laid out in the same way - we could walk around the outside of the interior walls but there was another interior wall where the main part with all the seating was. A number of people including children were being blessed (or whatever, I'm not Catholic so don't know about these things) so it was a busy old place with plenty of priests and worshippers as well as tourists all mingling around.

View of the cathedral from the cloisters which adjoin the Bishops' Palace.

Then in a courtyard between the cathedral and the Bishops' Palace we came across this frame where you could get your picture taken. I had to drag my brother into the frame though!

The fun fair was coming to life on our way back to the car but no, we were not interested in having a ride on it!

I was really quite surprised that Narbonne was as beautiful and interesting as it was as I hadn't known anything much about the town. We have now made a New Year's resolution to visit Beziers (Herault dept) and Perpignan (Pyrenees-Orientales dept) this year as well!