Our Blog - Pyrénées - Prades, France

Our first stop was at the Lac de Montbel, which is an artificial lake that was created in 1985. It was created after a drought in 1982 and various impact studies on the environment. The water that arrives here from the snowmelt is used to irrigate the Lauragais and the Ariège plain. It is also designed somewhat as a tourist attraction, with the riverbanks laid out with a path that goes all the way around, picnic areas, campsites, playgrounds, and a couple of different businesses for boating/kayaking/canoeing. We didn't walk all the way around, but wanted to give Lucy a little break from the car.

There is one area that we were walking across, a paved area between the beach/camping area and where the path goes into the woods, and Lucy kept on chasing these little lizards. They seemed to be resting in the little shade section, and when Lucy would approach, they would scurry up and over the short concrete wall. She almost caught one of them, and we were wondering what she would have actually done with it if she would have caught one!

Then a few pictures just as we were driving, of the rocky hills (I guess they are mountains). It was really pretty country, but the roads were SO twisty ... I was getting a little sick in the back seat.

Then we came up on this little hairpin curve that literally goes around the ruins of something. I'm not sure what it is, but I'm thinking there is some significance if they built the road around it. In this area, there are lots of former Cathar castles, most of them in ruins ... maybe it is one of them?

Now the actual town of Prades. Now ... there are 6 towns named Prades, and another 5 or 6 that have Prades in the name (like Prades-le-Lez). The name comes from the Latin prata, meaning meadows. The first mention dates back to 843 with Charles the Bald. It has a little bit of a checkered past. In 1939, tens of thousands of Spanish refugees arrive by train (among them a famous cellist that I will mention later). Another set of refugees arrived in mid-1940, these from the French town of Menton. Following the armistice of June, 1940, 2/3 of Menton was annexed to Italy and the French inhabitants were evacuated. Nowadays, there is just over 6,000 people living here.

This is the main town square, which has a lovely fountain and is surrounded by several nice restaurants. On one side of the square is the towns main attraction, the Église Saint-Pierre de Prades. The oldest parts of the building date back to the 12th century, including the Romanesque clock tower. You can pick out the Romanesque features, including the rounded arches. There are 5 stories: the upper 3 levels (you can see the top 2) have open Romanesque arched windows while the bottom 2 stories have arches built into the stone but are not open, because they support the rest of the tower. The top was added later (and really doesn't go with the tower, if you ask me).

The main church is supposedly built in Gothic style but not the Gothic that we are used to. The exterior looks really plain, just a big square next to the bell tower, with no flying buttresses or other pointy Gothic windows. You can see the Gothic vaults but the side chapel entrances are still Romanesque in nature.

While this is called the Chapel of Saint Sébastien, who is shown in a couple places, the chapel really is dedicated to the Pietà, showing the body of Jesus on the lap of his mother Mary after the Crucifixion. This Pietà dates from the 18th century.

The organ was built in 1818 by the Grinda brothers. Above it, you can see a painting of the Exaltation of Saint Peter, done in 1872 by Leo Polge.

Chapel of the Rosary was actually where the organ was placed until 1818 when the grand organ (shown before) was built.

And finally, the altarpiece. The 17th century masterpiece is called the altar of St. Peter, which is considered one of the biggest in France. It was created by a Catalan sculptor and finished in 1699.

Around town, there are a few very interesting buildings, one that had this old sign painted on the side of the building. Just around the corner, this 2nd picture is not a person in the window, but everything there is a Trompe-l'œil, or an optical illusion, painted on the side of the building. There are actually no windows at all on that side of the building. Pretty impressive, huh?

Then this building, which just has some really nice moulding.

We can see this from our B&B ... the Massif du Canigou, which in Catalan means "the dog's tooth".

We had dinner at one of the restaurants on the square, so I grabbed a couple pictures of the tower, with lights illuminating the Romanesque arched windows.

I mentioned Pablo Casals earlier. Born in Spain in 1876, Pau Casals i Defilló was a famous cellist, composer, and conductor. He is generally regarded as the pre-eminent cellist of the first half of the 20th century and one of the greatest cellists of all time. He was an ardent supporter of the Spanish Republican government and went into exile in 1939. He was such opponent of the Francoist Spain that he refused to appear in countries that recognized the Spanish Franco government. During his exile, he lived in Prades and you can see various things around town related to Casals. In 1950 , Pablo Casals created the music festival in Prades (which now bears his name) in which he participated until 1966 , and which enabled legendary musical encounters between the greatest instrumentalists of the time. In 1955, he relocated to Puerto Rico, where his mother had been born. He made a notable exception to his Franco-supporter ban when he took part in a concert at the White House in 1961, at the invitation of President Kennedy, whom he admired. In 1963, Casals was awarded the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom. He died and was initially buried in Puerto Rico. After the fall of the Franco government, his remains were moved to his hometown in Spain.