Castres Travel Video Guide

Castres Travel Itinerary

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In spite of its industrial activities, CASTRES , 40km south of Albi, has kept a lot of its charm, in the streets on the right bank of the Agout and, in particular, the riverside quarter where the old tanners' and weavers' houses overhang the water. The centre is a bustling, businesslike sort of place, with a big morning market on Saturdays on place Jean-Jaures. By the rather unremarkable old cathedral, the former bishop's palace holds the Hotel de Ville and Castres' Musee Goya (July & Aug daily 9am-noon & 2-6pm; rest of year closed Mon; 20F/?3.50), which is home to the biggest collection of Spanish paintings in France outside the Louvre. Goya is represented by some lighter political paintings and a large collection of engravings, and there are also works by other famous Iberian artists, like Murillo and Velazquez.

Castres' other specialist museum is the Musee Jean-Jaures (same hours as the Musee Goya; 10F/?1.52), dedicated to its famous native son. It's located in place Pelisson, and getting to it takes you through the streets of the old town, past the splendid seventeenth-century Hotel Nayrac , on rue Frederic-Thomas. The museum was opened in 1988 by President Mitterrand - appropriately enough, because Mitterrand's Socialist Party is the direct descendant of Jaures' SFIO, founded in 1905, which split at the Congress of Tours in 1920, when the "Bolshevik" element left to form the French Communist Party. The museum, though slightly hagiographic as you might expect, nonetheless pays well-deserved tribute to one of France's boldest and best political writers, thinkers and activists of modern times. Jaures supported Dreyfus , founded

the newspaper L'Humanite , campaigned against the death penalty and colonialism, and was murdered for his courageous pacifist stance at the outbreak of World War I - oddly enough, by a man called Villain. There could be no better epitaph than his own last article in L'Humanite , in which he wrote: "The most important thing is that we should continue to act and to keep our minds perpetually fresh and alive ... That is the real safeguard, the guarantee of our future."

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