THE FORT DE BELLEGARDE

Located on the hill of Bellegarde at 423 m altitude, ideally situated on the border between the passes of Panissars and Perthus, the fort of Bellegarde was first a signal tower built by Jaume II of Majorca (to watch over the lands of his enemy, the king of Aragon) and then a medieval castle that knew few warlike episodes. It is from 1659 and the attachment of Roussillon, Cerdagne and Conflent to the Kingdom of France by the Treaty of the Pyrenees, that will be born the real strategic importance of this fort placed exactly on the new border, time from which a series of uninterrupted wars between Spain and France will ignite our region for more than one hundred years. In 1679, Vauban had the castle razed to the ground and recovered the stones of the priory for the construction of the fort from which the oldest known passage in the Pyrenees-Orientales could be watched.

The panorama is exceptional and opens on both France and Spain, from the bay of Rosas to the Pyrenees. A drawbridge allows you to enter the building. The tour passes by the impressive ramparts, the chapel and the famous 63 m deep well. A chain system with buckets was used to draw water which was then poured into a pipe. The fort's parade ground is so large that it could accommodate a football pitch!

It is worth noting that filmmakers settled there in the 1970s to shoot La Scoumoune with Jean-Paul Belmondo and Claudia Cardinale, and Charles Bronson for L'Évadé.