Continua il nostro viaggio alla scoperta di luoghi misteriosi in Francia. Oggi vi presentiamo quello che resta della fortezza catara di Montsègur, un castello arroccato sulla cima di una montagna, davvero suggestivo, sia dal punto di vista storico che paesaggistico. Costruito su una rupe di pietra calcarea a oltre mille metri di altezza, nel XIII secolo Montsègur fu protagonista di un assedio violento, con un finale ancor più brutale e sanguinario. Per mesi, un esiguo numero di soldati difese una comunità catara, considerata eretica, dall’assedio di un esercito di crociati, guidato dal siniscalco di Carcassonne e dall’arcivescovo di Narbona. Alla fine dell’assedio il castello si arrese il 2 marzo 1244 e oltre duecento catari, donne e uomini rifiutarono di abiurare la propria fede e furono messi a morte tra le fiamme dei roghi ai piedi del castello. La vista di cui si può godere dalla cima del monte e dalle mura del castello, è incredibile e stupefacente. Un silenzio assordante avvolge

Member of the Bibliophiles project London Department – Art historian, specialist in antique jewelry and indipendent literary historian. Can you present yourself ? I am an art historian during the day, and an independent literary historian on early mornings and late evenings. As an art historian, I specialise in antique jewellery. As an independent literary historian, I collect, study, translate, and contextualise the works of subversive German women writers of the fin de siècle. As it turns out, they work extremely well in conjunction: I might not pick up on the subtler points of the novellas if I weren’t intimately familiar with etiquette due to studying old fashion magazines for my jewellery research; and I might not understand the sociological significance of jewellery quite as well if hadn’t also studied the literature of that era. How did you start to collect books or to develop an interest for art and culture ? I studied art history for a very simple reason: I knew that a good pa

Can you present yourself ? I’m Julia Martins, and I’m a historian – I’m particularly interested in gender history and the history of medicine and alchemy. I grew up in Brazil and I took my undergraduate studies in history there, before moving to Paris and Bologna for my master’s degrees, in which I analysed the translations of early modern books of secrets. Then I moved to London for my PhD, where I continued to research the topic of how knowledge is reshaped as it is diffused, focusing on the translation of recipes about reproduction and the female body – everything from conception to childbirth! I currently have a YouTube channel and blog, Living History, where I explore the history of everyday life and make academic research accessible. I also run a feminist book club for charity, called My Body, My Book Club. How did you start to collect books or to develop an interest for art and culture ? I grew up surrounded by books; my mother worked as a translator and many of the books in our