Our Blog - Najac, France

Another of the "Plus Beaux Villages de France", Najac is situated at the top of a steep promontory overlooking the Averyron River. The entire town stretches out along a single street, built on a ridge with steep slopes on both sides. We started our little tour of the city at Place du Faubourg where the Office of Tourism is (go figure, 700 people live here and they have an Tourist Office). The square dates back to the 13th and 14th centuries, and is a long rectangular area surrounded on both sides with stone or timber-framed houses dating from the 15th and 16th centuries. The majority of them have protruding porches that shelter what used to be market stalls.

I thought this was cute ... we stopped here to have a coffee and the sign (which obviously is a little joke), says: Welcome, 1 coffee is 2 euros, 1 coffee please is 1.80 euros, and Hello, a cafe please, thank you is 1.50 euros.

At the other end of the town is the fortress, which we will visit later. But as we walked along the ridge towards it, we got a few nice pictures.

The 12-sided Fontaine des Consuls was carved in 1344, out of a single block of granite. The public fountain is decorated with faces of a blessing bishop, a king, and several other personalities.

I tried to get a few decent pictures that would really show how this thin little village sits in almost a single line on the ridge-line.

The Castle of Najac is really not a castle or former residence as we normally think of it, but really more of a former military fortress. Around 1100, a Romanesque fortified tower for defense was built by the son of Raymond IV, at that time the Count of Toulouse. It is rebuilt and enlarged in 1252, specifically to show off the power of the new owner, Alphonse de Poitiers (son-in-law of the last Count of Toulouse, Raymond VII). Instead of a "home", he builds a military fortress with walls over 80 feet tall and sitting on (basically) a cliff, so it was easily defended in all directions. However, the issue with this type of fortress is that, while you can easily defend it from inside, you eventually run out of food and water if you can't get supplies in, which is exactly what happened during the Wars of Religion. The lord of Morlhan, a Protestant, took refuge in the fortress in a conflict with the Catholics, who set siege to the fortress for a few months until the fortress ran out of food and water. The Knights Templar were imprisoned in the lower dungeon here after their arrest in 1307.

It is abandoned and finally, after the French Revolution, it is sold to a private individual. Unfortunately, he decided to use it as a stone quarry to build houses, and you can see how around the doors and windows, where the stones were more easily removed, a lot of stones are missing. In the middle of the 19th century, an accident killed 3 workers and so demolition was stopped. Finally it was sold to someone who saved it from ruin and did the work required to open it to visitors.

As you enter through the gate to the fortress, you can see the various defensive mechanisms, such as the portcullis (the gate that comes down) as well as holes on the sides where other defensive mechanisms were kept.

Inside, you can see the original tower on one corner, and then the other less-intact walls. If you look closely, you can see the stairs that go up the middle of the wall to what used to be a room with a door (and is now just an open area where the stones were taken). You can even see the lovely vaulted ceiling in that room.

Here on the side of the round tower, you can see on the right-hand wall a long tube running up-and-down. This was an attempt to gather rainwater, which would run down this stone tube and into a cistern at the bottom

You are able to take a nice guided tour through the various rooms in the round tower and get a good view of the nice architecture, vaulted ceilings, round staircases, etc.

All the way up at the top, there is a bell (from 1596) and a little round turret. It served as an alarm bell until the time of the French Revolution. The bell still rings, now automatically using the clock mechanism that you can see in the doorway. It rang almost immediately after we got out there and I can tell you from experience, it is really loud when you are right next to it!

Just below the fortress is the 13th century Porte de la Pique, which was the entrance to the fortified town.