Myths and Legends

Bruniquel, a peaceful medieval village located on the edge of the Tarn and Garonne, on a summer evening. A stormy night. Wisps of haze from the nearby Gorges de l'Aveyron surmount the « old castle », giving it this dramatic appearance, this fantastic character befitting to this mythical land, to this legendary site.

Myths and legends, legends and myths, constantly intersect there indeed. Because this place, inhabited since the Lower Paleolithic, i.e. nearly 350,000 years, delivered the oldest traces of humankind in deep underground environment (a structure dated to about 175 000 years ago and attributed to Neanderthal) as well as beautiful Magdalenian art works (the jumping horse, the bisons of the Marnières, etc..) now exhibited at the British Museum, at the Museum of Saint Germain en Laye ...

Bruniquel appears not only in the pantheon of prehistoric sites, but also at the forefront of medieval history: it is indeed in the heart of the city, of which a legend attributes the foundation to the Merovingian Queen Brunhild during the sixth century, that a troubadour named William of Tudela began, in 1211, the writing of a long and now famous poem in the Occitan language: the Song of the Crusade against the Albigensians.