The Pyrénées-Orientales is the Catalan department of France, a land of passage between Iberia and Gaul since time immemorial, whose castle heritage bears the dual imprint of Catalan culture and the French monarchy, which incorporated Roussillon into its possessions in 1659 through the Treaty of the Pyrenees.
Perpignan, the former capital of the Kingdom of Majorca and summer residence of the Kings of Aragon, boasts a royal palace of great architectural richness that bears witness to the influence of the Catalan-Aragonese court in the Middle Ages. Salses Castle, a transitional fortress between a medieval castle and a bastioned citadel, built by the Catholic Monarchs on the border between Aragon and France, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Peyrepertuse and Quéribus, Cathar castles shared with the Aude department, dominate the hills of the Catalan Corbière with their ruins.
Catalan Romanesque art, of which French Catalonia preserves some of the finest examples — Saint-Martin-du-Canigou, Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa, Serrabone — completes this picture of a heritage of exceptional richness and originality in France’s southernmost department.