Fasthotel on the A61 motorway
20 minutes from Toulouse and Carcassonne, the Avignonet Lauragais hotel-restaurant is the first Fasthôtel in France located on a motorway service area. Accessible in both directions, on the Port Lauragais service area, it reveals, a stone's throw from the motorway, a very pleasant natural setting on the edge of the towpath of the Canal du Midi! An amazing stopover, to be discovered both on the holiday motorway and for nature tourism along the water or along the canal for hikers and cycle tourists!
Professionals will discover a haven of peace, "in the countryside" and always the low prices and Fasthôtel quality as well as the evening stopover packages!
Avignonet and Lauragais, a stronghold of Cathar resistance
The history of Avignonet in Pays Lauragais was marked by an act of resistance by the Cathar knights. This is what the followers of a reformist religion who opposed the Catholic power of the time were called. Catharism, considered a heresy, was fought during the bloody crusades against the Albigensians with the support of the ecclesiastical tribunal of the Inquisition.
Beyond a religious war, the objective for the King of France, master to the North of the Loire, was to take power in the South-West and to subdue the Count of Toulouse as well as the King of Aragon.
On May 28, 1242, Cathar "resistance fighters" from the Château de Montségur were able, thanks to accomplices, to enter the Château d'Avignonet to kill the inquisitors who had set up their tribunal there.
This act was one of the last victories of the heretics before their end during the siege of Montségur at the end of which, in March 1244, the Cathar refugees perished by fire.