Things to See in the Languedoc:   Historic Cities:   Carcassonne  (  Carcassona):   The Gallo-Roman Period

By 122 BC the Romans were in control of the Narbonnais area and settled in Carcassonne. 

By 70 BC Roman Carcassonne was classed as a city.

The first stone walls of Carcassonne date back from this period.

There is little outward evidence of it, but if you walk around the lices between the two sets of city walls, in places where the inner wall has crumbled, you can see among the rubble in-fill small cordons of red bricks dating from this period.

Characteristic of the period are zigzag walls, punctuated by towers, both designed to withstand battering, to which straight walls were vulnerable.

In 350, the Francs took the city, but it was quickly re-taken by the Romans.