A red-brick city on the Tarn where the world's largest Toulouse-Lautrec collection fills a 13th-century archbishop's palace, the most forbidding Gothic cathedral in France looms like a Crusaders' fortress over the medieval streets, and the Cathar heresy was crushed here 800 years ago
Albi (50,000) in Occitanie is a UNESCO World Heritage city centred on two extraordinary buildings: the Cathédrale Sainte-Cécile (begun 1282) — the largest brick Gothic cathedral in the world, built as a fortress-church after the Albigensian Crusade against the local Cathar heresy — and the Palais de la Berbie (13th century), a fortified archbishop's palace now housing the Musée Toulouse-Lautrec, the world's most comprehensive collection of the artist's works with over 1,000 pieces. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901) was born in Albi; the museum includes his personal belongings, corresponde…
The 'Albigensians' — the Cathars of the Albi region — were a dualist Christian sect that rejected the material world as evil and the Roman Catholic Church as corrupt, attracting widespread support in 13th-century Languedoc. The Albigensian Crusade (1209–1229), launched by Pope Innocent III with the military backing of northern French nobles, became one of the most violent religious suppressions in medieval European history — the massacre at Béziers (1209, where perhaps 20,000 people were killed regardless of religious affiliation) was accompanied by the reported remark 'Kill them all — God wi…