There are cute French villages and then there are REALLY CUTE French villages. Minerve is in the superlative category. Officially so: it’s on the list of les Plus Beaux Villages de France (the Most Beautiful French Villages). I know I just said I was a city girl, but I do love places like this.
It has been a while since we’ve visited. Though it’s been on the to-do list for all of my recent visitors, we just never had the time for the 45-minute drive from Carcassonne. What a mistake. The drive is gorgeous. And the village…well, these photos were taken on a Sunday afternoon in August. Peak tourist. Yet you can see for yourself that Minerve was quiet. A secret. Now you know. Share wisely.
The town is built at the confluence of the Cesse and Brian rivers. About 50 million years ago, the entire area was the bottom of a warm-water sea, as evidenced by the fossils in the limestone. The rivers carved deep gorges, which form a comma-shaped peninsula, kind of. Natural fortification. Unsurprisingly, it has been occupied since the Bronze Age.
The Romans came along, too. The town appeared officially in writing around 873. Old. Stuff like that just boggles my mind. Obviously places fell down and were built over, but probably some of the same stones were used. And today those houses are still there, and they have Internet.
There’s a charming bookstore and lots of artists’ shops and studios and many places to eat and drink. There are about 130 residents, down considerably from the boom years of the mid-1800s, when there were about 400. It’s clearly not an easy place to live. Imagine hauling your groceries–or worse, a new piece of furniture–down these “streets.” But vacationers provide some animation. Just enough to keep the place alive, without overrunning it. 
The rivers lie far below, bone dry at this time of year, but prone to flashes of rage. At least the town is high and dry.
The Candela is all that remains of the viscount’s castle, which was built at the end of the 13th century. There once was a drawbridge nearby. The castle was dismantled in the 18th and 19th centuries. I wonder why.
The church was closed, but the exterior was fascinating.
I took so many photos, I’m going to do another post. Come back for more on Friday.
Taste of France 
This is a charming little place, I think I could wander here for hours and never tire of the little nooks. A hidden gem to savor and to put on my ever growing list of interesting places that you have written about.
I wonder city mouse how did you come to live in a village? How did you discover your little village? Perhaps you mentioned it in another post and you could send me the link.
Good luck with the internet, phone and all other forms of communication. I am sure it is a pain especially for work.
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It started as a vacation house that we would rent when not using it (long before AirBnB). I was working in Brussels, and being in a little village was a nice change of pace. Then I was transferred to New York, had our kid there, and my husband absolutely hated living in the city. He wanted to move back to Europe but “to the sun, not the rain.” So we came here. I figured it would be for a year or two. Ha!
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What a delightful spot!
France really does have so many precious nooks and crannies to discover.
I know those stone walls would keep the church nice and cool in the summer but boy it’d be cold in the winter.
Suzanne
http://www.suzannecarillo.com
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Yes, churches seem a bit dank in the winter, but it rarely freezes here so it isn’t as extreme as all that. Some churches have those propane heaters like you see at cafés in Paris.
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For decades, my husband and I watch Tour de France every summer not because we are big cyclists but because we can’t get enough of France’s beauty. In our dreams we’d follow the circuit one time for real so we could experience all that splendor first hand. Minerve looks like one of those places on our itinerary. It is morphed into the landscape. As always, your pictures depict interesting, unique details, like stacking stones without using any bonding material.
What doesn’t cease to amaze me is how clever people really have been throughout our human history, how ordinary people leading ordinary lives managed to build those buildings and bridges back then. I’m pretty sure they didn’t have a lot of degrees in engineering or architecture (maybe very few, but those type of buildings were built by hundreds of people) , so that type of expertise was a collective accumulation of knowledge based on experimentation and trial/error which had been passed down from one generation to another. People back then instinctively knew how to work together without attending any team building sessions. Modern times gained some things (like internet for example) but lost the art of building together something that lasts thousands of years. It is always a trade off, isn’t it?
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Did you see my post from a while ago about the Pont de Gard? I made all the same comments about Roman engineers! Yes!
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No, I haven’t seen that post.I’ll look it up, thank you!
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I recently found a reproduction of a vellum page showing the architect or engineer’s drawing for the Pont Valentre bridge in Cahors, built in the 14th century.
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That sounds so cool!!!!
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How, indeed, were bridges like that built? Amazing! I’d love to know why the castle was torn down. Perhaps the residents of the village resented the owners and/or perhaps using the stones from the castle was easier than bringing them up from the bottom of the gorge. I’ve always hunted for arrowheads, minerals and crystals and Mayan artifacts and was kidnapped on my way to see an old Mayan ruin in Guatemala, so one in civilized France would be a must for me to see. Thanks for sharing! xoxox, Brenda
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I will try to find out by Friday!
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And I’m waiting for your memoir to come out.
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What a beautiful place!
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It’s gorgeous. The village is one postcard after another, and the surrounding countryside is spectacular.
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Oh, what a beautiful place… thanks so much for sharing. I am just in awe of the architecture still standing after all these years….. and the countryside.. magnificant.
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They had security reasons to build in crazy places like this, but still, as someone not afraid of heights but not at ease with them either, I can’t imagine how they managed to mount walls atop the sheer drops, and then to put roofs on them.
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Very interesting! Beautiful photos. I hope to visit France in the future.
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You’ll love it!
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So beautiful. Ticket booked….car booked….now to figure out where to start.
Ali
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How long is the bucket list?
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What a picturesque little village! And so sleepy in the high season, it must be a veritable ghost town in winter … and no doubt just how the club of 130 like it! I also look at those walls built on the precipice and think only dark and alarming things.
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I suppose it would take only a busload or two of tourists to make it crowded, but there were no buses that weekend in August.
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This is so amazing how they built these structures at the time period!! I love seeing your photos of all the places around France!
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Yes, with such rudimentary tools, too.
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I spy a Café de la Place. How things change but stay the same. Love the idea of no crowds in August.
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Things stay the same especially in the south.
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Thanks for all the beautiful photographs of this lovely village. I love the up-close views of the brick/rock work, imagining the long-ago artisan pawing through a pile of rocks to chose each one to fit in specific places.
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It must have been a real calculation over whether it was worth the effort to make the rocks a bit more uniform vs. dealing with uneven rocks.
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