What to see and do in Mirepoix

We share our top tips for what to see and do in Mirepoix, a medieval jewel of the Midi-Pyrénées region, with oodles of charm and a marvellous market!

Say ‘Mirepoix’ and if onions, celery and carrots are the first thing that springs to mind, it shows you know your way around the kitchen. And in a roundabout way the mirepoix you dice comes from this charming medieval market town located on the river Hers in the Ariège at the crossroads of Toulouse, Carcassonne and Foix, in the heart of Cathar country.

History of Mirepoix

With 600 members of the heretical Cathar sect and a Cathar lord – Pierre-Roger de Mirepoix – the town was an early target of the Albigensian Crusade to eliminate them all. Simon de Montfort captured Mirepoix in 1209 and bestowed it on his right-hand man, Guy de Lévis. The Lévis would rule Mirepoix until the French Revolution, while Pierre-Roger de Mirepoix went on to lead the Cathar garrison in the lofty citadel of Monségur. Here 225 Cathars were besieged by the crusaders until they were starved out in 1244. All preferred to be burned at the stake rather than convert to Catholicism.

‘Mirepoix’ comes from Mira Peis (‘see the fish’ in old Occitan), hence the golden fish on the town’s coat of arms. Originally the Mirapiciens looked at the fish from the right bank of the river Hers, until a flooded dam swept Mirepoix away in 1279, leaving only its castle, the Château de Terride. Jean de Lévi built a replacement town higher up on the left bank and created, bastide-style, a rectangular grid of streets around a market square, with a church off to the side. The Lévis rebuilt it after the Black Prince sacked it in 1355 in the Hundred Years’ War. A decade later English mercenaries, the Routiers burned it down again.

A bit after the fact, Mirepoix was fortified: one gate, the Porte d’Aval, is still intact.

Medieval masterpiece

But karma was done with Mirepoix, leaving it one of the most beautiful (and biggest) market squares in all Occitanie: the colourful, 112m by 55m Place des Couverts, lined with wood pillared porticoes where merchants could trade in all weathers. “The unique half-timber framed houses around the marketplace, naturally create a shopping and restaurant arcade,” say locals Mark and Kay Williams of Real South of France Tours. “And there are amazing wooden gargoyles along some of the frontages.”

The best gargoyles and carvings (103 of them!) adorn the ends of the beams of the Maison des Consuls, once seat of the local magistrates.

Because of its key location, Mirepoix has always been an important market town, and Place des Couverts is the perfect stage for Mirepoix’s massive Monday morning market as well as for festivals, including the Swing à Mirepoix jazz on Easter weekend and the themed Fête de la Pomme in October. The local apple artists love a challenge: bulls made of apples? Musical instruments? Tintin? No problem!

Historic monuments

Looming over all is the 58m tower of the church of Saint-Maurice. The Lévis began it in 1298, but in 1317 when the pope elevated Mirepoix to a bishopric (part of the Church’s scheme to keep a close eye on heresy danger zones), they went a bit mad and carried on building for the next six centuries. The nave is a tour de force of southern Gothic, where width rather than height was a thing: its 22.2m single span nave is surpassed only by Girona’s Cathedral (22.98m).

Walk along Avenue de Pont to see Mirepoix’s other monument historique: an 800-year-old holm oak, last survivor of the forest chopped down to re-build the 13^th century town.

Even older is the remarkable three storey Église Rupestre de Vals, 12km west of Mirepoix. Partially built into the rock, a holy site since the Bronze Age and once a temple to a Celtic god, its mid-level is decorated 12^th century Catalan frescoes. There’s no place in France like it.

And the Mirepoix?

One of the last dukes, Gaston Pierre de Lévis-Mirepoix (1699-1757) despite being “an incompetent and mediocre individual… who owed his vast fortune to the affection Louis XV felt toward his wife,” had a chef who invented a sauce and named it after his boss. The original version included wine and meats, but over the decades mirepoix simply came to mean the diced carrots, onions and celery that you sauté to start dozens of sauces, soups and stews.

Dana Facaros has lived in France for over 30 years. She is the creator of French Food Decoder app: everything you want to know about French food, and co-author of the Bradt guide to Gascony & the Pyrenees and many guide books to France.

Find out more about Mirepoix at: ariegepyrenees.com