Interior of Church of Saint Mary Magdalene at Rennes le Chateau, Aude, Languedoc, France.
Rennes-le-Château has a complex history. It is the site of a prehistoric encampment, and later a Roman colony being part of the Roman province of Gallia Narbonensis, the wealthiest part of Roman Gaul. Rennes-le-Château was part of Septimania during the 6th and 7th centuries, during the trying period when the Visigoths had been defeated by the Frankish King Clovis I, and during the 19th century was popularly considered to be the center of the county of Razès. By 1050 the Counts of Toulouse held control over the area, involving a rapid increase of castles in the area, including the existence of a castle in Rennes-le-Château by around 1002, though nothing remains above ground of this medieval structure—the present ruin is from the 17th or 18th century. Several castles situated in the surrounding region in the Languedoc were central to the battle between the Catholic church and the Cathars at the beginning of the 13th century. Other castles guarded the volatile border with Spain. Whole communities were wiped out during the campaigns of the Catholic authorities to rid the area of the Cathar heretics during the Albigensian Crusades and again when Protestants fought against the French monarchy two centuries before the French Revolution. The village received up to around 100,000 tourists each year during the height of popularity of Dan Brown's bestselling novel The Da Vinci Code. The modern reputation of Rennes-le-Château rises mainly from claims and stories dating from the mid-1950s concerning the local 19th-century priest Father Bérenger Saunière. These stories influenced the authors of the worldwide bestseller The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail in 1982, and that work in turn influenced Dan Brown when he wrote The Da Vinci Code, published in 2003. The extraordinary popularity of The Da Vinci Code reignited the interest of tourists, who come to the village to see sites associated with Saunière and Rennes-le-Château.
Size: 4300px × 3911px
Location: Rennes Le Chateau, Aude Languedoc France
Photo credit: © DV TRAVEL / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
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