Basilica of Saints Nazarius and Celsus

Basilica of Saints Nazarius and Celsus tickets: which one to buy

The basilica stands inside the walled citadel of Carcassonne, at its southern end, a few minutes on foot from the castle keep. Entry is free and no booking is needed, which makes it the best value inside the walls by a wide margin, since almost everything else there is either ticketed or a souvenir shop. Guided tours of the citadel include it as a stop, and the good ones spend time on it, because the church explains the history of the site better than the restored ramparts do.

The castle and ramparts ticket is separate and sold at the chateau entrance, and the two together make a sensible half-day. Evening concerts and organ recitals are ticketed and announced on the door and on the parish noticeboard rather than through the tourist office, so look when you arrive. If you are staying in the lower town, the walk up across the old bridge and through the western gate takes about twenty-five minutes and is far more rewarding than the shuttle bus.

Visiting Basilica of Saints Nazarius and Celsus: what to see

The building reads as two churches joined in the middle, and it is. The nave is Romanesque, consecrated in the twelfth century after Pope Urban II blessed the materials on a visit in 1096, with heavy round piers, small windows and a dim, solid space. Beyond the crossing, the transept and choir were rebuilt in Gothic from the late thirteenth century under French royal patronage, and the change is abrupt, with the walls dissolving into tall windows.

Those windows hold some of the oldest stained glass in the south of France, thirteenth and fourteenth-century work in the choir and two great rose windows in the transept arms. Statues of apostles stand against the choir piers. A famous carved slab known as the siege stone, now displayed in the transept, shows an assault on a fortified town and is generally linked to the Albigensian Crusade, whose leader was briefly buried here. The church lost cathedral status in 1803 and was restored by Viollet-le-Duc in the nineteenth century, more carefully here than on the walls outside.

Basilica of Saints Nazarius and Celsus opening hours and the best time to go

The citadel takes several million visitors a year and the middle of a summer day is close to unbearable in the main street. The basilica sits at the far end from the gate, which thins the crowd considerably, but the real answer is to come before ten or after six. The walls stay open in the evening and are floodlit, and the walk back down the hill after dark is the memory most people keep. Inside, the Gothic choir is at its best in the late afternoon, when the low sun comes through the southern rose.

Winter is genuinely quiet and many shops close, but the church does not. The national day fireworks in July are launched from the ramparts and draw enormous crowds from across the region, and the citadel is effectively closed to casual visiting that evening. A hat, water and shoes for cobbles are the practical needs, and the lower town across the river has the better and cheaper restaurants.