Rennes le Chateau

Rennes-le-Château (Rènnas del Castèl in Occitan) is a small medieval castle village and a commune in the Aude département in Languedoc in southwestern France. It is known internationally, and receives tens of thousands of visitors per year, for being at the center of various conspiracy theories.

Starting in the 1950s, a local restaurant owner, in order to increase business, had spread rumors of a hidden treasure found by a 19th century priest. The story achieved national fame in France, and was then enhanced and expanded by various hoaxsters, who claimed that the priest, Father Bérenger Saunière, had found proof of a secret society known as the Priory of Sion.

The story and society were later proven to be a hoax, but became the origin for hypotheses in documentaries and bestselling books such as Holy Blood Holy Grail and the fiction thriller The Da Vinci Code.

The village is still considered by tourists to be packed with clues to an alternate view of religious history which has long existed in the area.

Mountains frame both ends of the region — the Cevennes to the northeast and the Pyrenees to the south. The area is known for beautiful scenery, with jagged ridges, deep river canyons and rocky limestop e plateaus, with large caves underneath. Like many European villages, it has a complex history.

It is the site of a prehistoric encampment, and later a Roman colony (possibly an oppida, but no traces have been found of ramparts, and it is thought more likely to have been a Roman villa or even a wayside temple, such as is confirmed to have been built at Fa, no more than 5 km (3.1 mi) west of Couiza).

Rennes-le-Château was a Visigoth site during the 6th and 7th centuries, during the trying period when the Visigoths had been defeated by the Frankish King Clovis I and had been reduced to Septimania. However, the claim that Rennes-le-Château was the capital of the Visigoths is an exaggeration: it was Narbonne that held that position.

This claim can be traced back to an anonymous document - actually written by Nöel Corbu - entitled L'histoire de Rennes-le-Château, which was deposited at the Departmental Archives at Carcassonne, on 14 June 1962. The assertion of Visigothic importance of Rennes-le-Château is drawn from one source: A monograph by Louis Fédié, entitled "Rhedae", La Cité des Chariots, which was published in 1876. Monsieur Fédié's assertions concerning the population and importance of Rennes-le-Château have been contradicted by archaeology and the work of more recent historians.

It was the site of a medieval castle which was definitely in existence by 1002. (Nothing remains above ground of this medieval structure - the present ruin is from the 17th or 18th century.) Some authors maintain that Rennes was an important site during the era of Charlemagne, but historians disagree as there is no basis in primary sources to confirm this. Archaeological results suggest that this site was a small settlement of no more than 300 inhabitants at most.

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 for religious freedom against the French monarchy during the French Revolution.