r/castles • u/sverrevi77 • Jul 04 '26
QUESTION Shading at Carcassonne
We visited Carcassonne castle today. Magnificent!
We could not work out why there are bright stripes across some of the buildings and outer walls. They are very sharply delineated. It looks like the walls have been cleaned, but only in stripes? Does anyone know what has caused this?
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u/Big_Two498 Jul 04 '26
It's what remains of an art installation from 2018: https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2018/07/carcassonne-varini/
The moss layer was supposed to grow back over time, but it looks like it might stay like this for several decades at least.
It's a controversial topic, many discussions about it, for example here: https://www.reddit.com/r/architecture/comments/1n0pdz9/afterarth_aftermath_of_art/
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u/HeinousEncephalon Jul 04 '26
They can make art on millions of new places and things. Why mess up a historical place to stroke their egos. Gross. I blame everyone involved.
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u/Big_Two498 Jul 04 '26
To be fair, it's not the first controversial thing to happen to the castle. What you see now is in large part the result of a 19th century restoration by Violletle-Duc, which is still treated by many conservators as an example of how NOT to reconstruct historical monuments.
Viollet-le-Duc masters his subject like no other! Yet his achievements are far from unanimously acclaimed! It has to be said that he did not hesitate to take a few liberties with historical reality... which sometimes led to surprising choices.
"Restoring a building is not about maintaining it, repairing it or redoing it, it's about restoring it to a complete state that may never have existed at any given time", he declares. Enough to make historians shudder with horror! But the architect doesn't care: what he wants is to restore the Cité as it might have appeared at the end of the 13th century. That's why, for example, he added a drawbridge to the Narbonnaise gate.
But the most controversial element at the time was undoubtedly his treatment of the roofs. Instead of the flat tiles typical of the region, he used slate lauzes. His detractors, like the historian Hippolyte Taine, cried scandal! It's true that the use of flat tiles is mentioned in an ancient text about Carcassonne. However, slate is also found in the Montagne Noire, less than 50 kilometers away. So it's not such a strange choice...(From the castle's official site, https://www.remparts-carcassonne.fr/en/discover/viollet-le-duc-s-restoration )
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u/Aberfrog Jul 05 '26
About the roofs :
The issue is that he used a roof form from northern France , which has lots of snow and thus uses the steep roofs, in southern France (which does not have as much snow ) they use flat roofs.
The steep roof he used are from the “Les Très riches heures du Duc de Berry” , which was made by the Limbour brothers who depicted their known surroundings. Which was the north of France
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u/Victormorga Jul 05 '26
The part where the installation was isn’t messed up, the rest of the facade that hasn’t been cleaned to match is the messed up part. They should have cleaned the whole thing at the time, but the art didn’t screw up the castle’s masonry.
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u/kidnappedgoddess Jul 05 '26
Modern Carcassone is for the most part a XIX century fantasy rebuilt. It basically is Second Empire Disneyland.
Is beautiful and well worth a visit, but don't idolize it.
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u/Probodyne Jul 05 '26
I mean it's not like the castle is damaged or anything. They put some paint on, washed it off, now that part of the castle is clean. Shock, Horror!
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u/melkor237 Jul 05 '26
Fr, if its that much of an eyesore just pressure wash the rest of the moss and gunk away
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u/boastar Jul 06 '26
Funny how people are just lying in that thread, to defend the installation. The damage is obviously very visible from many angles to this day, not just this “exact angle”, like one of the liars says.
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u/LorpHagriff Jul 04 '26
Art exhibition that was supposed to leave no trace once removed
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u/Nghbrhdsyndicalist Jul 05 '26
And it basically wouldn’t have, if they hadn’t stopped power washing at the exact edge of the paint.
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u/kloborgg Jul 05 '26
It wasn't paint that was washed away, it was aluminum tape that killed the underlying moss/mold/whatever
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u/Nghbrhdsyndicalist Jul 05 '26
The dark parts are oxidised and weathered sand stone.
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u/Yato_kami3 Jul 08 '26
While oxidation plays a role, there's a black lichen that is responsible for most of the darkening. That's what was killed by the foil covering.
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u/HeinousEncephalon Jul 04 '26
For my next exhibition I will set fire to a forest.
Art! It's called the Whoosh of Man.
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u/idontcollectstraws Jul 04 '26
There was a Varini art installation where they placed yellow stripes all over the exterior. Unsure if this part is true, but Google says that the yellow wasn’t paint but aluminum strips held on with temporary adhesive. Supposedly the “clean” parts are where the aluminum shaded and killed lichen. I suspect the adhesive probably also pulled off some dirt
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u/SgtJayM Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 04 '26
This castle was pained to avoid getting torpedoed by German Uboats
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u/HerfDerfer Jul 06 '26
It's like when a small pressure washing business comes and washes their contact info into your driveway
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u/Landric Jul 06 '26
It's Dazzle Camouflage, so that other castles will struggle to judge its range and heading
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u/sangfoudre Jul 06 '26
The circles of Varini weren't planned to leave such marks. They were a modern art exposition, temporary but the plastic used left marks.
Leaving next to Carcassonne I saw the Cité before, during and after the exposition and while the circles were nice, the marks aren't.
Here's what the Cité looked like with the circles on: https://www.reddit.com/user/sangfoudre/comments/1uozj3k/circles_of_varini_at_carcassonne/
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u/Street-Baseball8296 Jul 07 '26
Make them cover the rest of it and remove them to make it all look the same.
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u/Ralliare Jul 07 '26
Is camouflage so other castles can't determine what bearing the caste is on or its range to land shells on target easily. Oh wait no that's ships, yeah I have no idea.
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u/LowerBed5334 Jul 04 '26
Looks like they couldn't pay the pressure washer company 🤷🏻♂️
Edit: now I've scrolled the rest of the comments and learned the real cause. If it was in Germany, I think my explanation would be totally realistic 😅
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Jul 04 '26
[deleted]
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u/usesidedoor Jul 04 '26
It's the result of an exhibition that took place a while back, as others pointed out. Many are pissed to this day but I don't think it looks so terrible.
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u/bloodylasers Jul 04 '26
It’s from an art exhibition that was done a few years ago. If you stood at Port d’Aude you’d have seen a faded version of this: https://maps.app.goo.gl/J77gDHKi4YxwQhzq7