Categories: Occitanie, Off the Beaten Track in France, Toulouse Area

564 Saint-Lizier in the Ariège with Elyse (Sept 21)

[00:00:15] Introduction

Annie Sargent: This is Join Us in France, episode 564, cinq cent soixante-quatre.

Annie Sargent: Bonjour, I’m Annie Sargent and Join Us in France is the podcast where we take a conversational journey through the beauty, culture, and flavors of France.

[00:00:31] Today on the podcast

Annie Sargent: Today, I bring you a conversation with Elyse Rivin of Toulouse Guided Walks about Saint-Lizier, a hidden gem in the Ariege Department in France. It’s perched on a cliff with breathtaking views of the Pyrenees. This tiny village boasts two cathedrals, ancient Roman walls, a fascinating museum, and even a former psychiatric hospital.

Annie Sargent: If you love history, stunning architecture, and off-the-beaten path destinations, this episode is a must listen.

Annie Sargent: Discover why Saint-Lizier is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and how it offers a unique crowd-free French experience. I personally drove past Saint-Lizier so many times, and I saw it on the hill and I thought, “Oh, one of these days I should stop.”

Annie Sargent: And behold, Elyse and I finally did and we loved it. I’m not saying that you should book a one-week vacation to Saint-Lizier, obviously, it’s too small for that. But there are so many things to do in the Ariege area. It’s beautiful.

[00:01:35] Boot Camp 2026

Annie Sargent: I’m delighted to announce the dates of Boot Camp 2026. Who knows? Perhaps you can actually join us in France in person.

Annie Sargent: Browse to joinusinfrance.com/bootcamp2026 for all the details. The dates of this 2026 edition of the boot camp are October 3rd until October 10th, and we’ll be off for seven days of hanging out with Francophiles, visit wonderful sites around Toulouse, and optional language classes.

Annie Sargent: You can email me annie@joinusinfrance.com, if you have specific questions, but it’s all explained at the sales page at Boot Camp 2026.

Annie Sargent: Here are the changes we’re making for this year, well, next year. It’ll take place in October rather than in May. Why? Because there are many long weekends in May and it complicates everything. We always run into rail strikes, hot weather, crowds, high occupancy in hotels and Airbnbs, in restaurants, all of that.

Annie Sargent: So this year, we’re trying early October. Weather in Toulouse in October is typically light jacket weather, with the possibility of some rain. But overall, the fall is drier than the spring.

Annie Sargent: The only downside to doing this in October rather than May is that we have shorter days in October. But seeing Toulouse lit up after 7:30 PM really makes up for it, so it’s wonderful.

Annie Sargent: We’re reducing the number of days to seven full days instead of nine last year. We’re also reducing the price proportionally, so we’re being fair. Why? Well, we are organizing our seven days better. We’re doing just as much as we did last year, but we’re consolidating activities down a bit and giving you two free afternoons as well.

Annie Sargent: Elyse told me that 2026 is for sure her last boot camp. Maybe it is? But I will do everything in my power to tempt her into coming back in future years, even if that means that she takes part in fewer boot camp days. But for 2026, she’s committed to doing the whole thing, which is fantastic.

Annie Sargent: You can reserve your spot today. Space is limited, of course, we don’t have 40 spots by the time you hear this. I’m not sure how many we’ll have left. But you do have some time to think about it. I want you to be sure that you want to join the boot camp, and I’m confident that it will sell out as it always does.

Annie Sargent: I don’t need to put the pressure on. Life is stressful enough without stressing out on your next vacation, okay?

Annie Sargent: So again, to book this, go to joinusinfrance.com/bootcamp2026.

[00:04:36] Podcast supporters

Annie Sargent: This podcast is fueled by chocolatine coffee, the generosity of listeners like you. You book my itinerary consults, you take my VoiceMap tours, you join the boot camp, I hope, hop in my electric car for a day trip.

Annie Sargent: You’re chipping on Patreon and that’s really what makes the most difference, and I’m so, so grateful. If you want to keep me going and skip the ads on the podcast, there’s a link for that in the show notes, and you’ll find everything at joinusinfrance.com/boutique, and Merci beaucoup!

[00:05:08] Magazine segment

Annie Sargent: For the Magazine part of the podcast after my chat with Elyse today, I’ll discuss restricted traffic zones in Paris. I mentioned them last week without really explaining what they are, and I think you need to know.

Annie Sargent: Everything we talk about on the show and plenty more is waiting for you at joinusinfrance.com.

Annie Sargent: And if you want to see the show notes or transcript for this episode in particular, go to joinusinfrance.com/564.

Annie Sargent: And if you’d like a handy summary of the conversation with all the useful links, subscribe to the newsletter at joinusinfrance.com/newsletter. It’s the best way to stay in the loop.

Annie Sargent: Bonjour, Elyse.

Elyse Rivin: Bonjour, Annie.

Annie Sargent: We have a fun place to discuss. It’s called Saint-Lizier.

Elyse Rivin: Mm-hmm.

[00:06:11] Location and Overview

Annie Sargent: And it’s not very far from where we live in Toulouse. It is in the Ariège Department, and it is a very small, yet very interesting village.

Elyse Rivin: It is indeed. We are north of a department that goes into the Pyrenees Mountains, and there are many, many tiny little villages and little places with very long histories, and this is one of them. It’s in the foothills of the Pyrenees, about 100 kilometers south of Toulouse, and it’s a tiny, tiny, tiny little town village, I’m not sure which designation to give it,perched up on top of a hill that almost looks like a cliff. That is the ancient part. There’s a new little modern part that’s down below in the flat of the valley, but we’re going to talk about the part that’s up above, the old Saint-Lizier.

Annie Sargent: Right, so if you’ve been to a place like Eze in Provence, for example, it’s about like that. There was a medieval village that’s very well preserved and very nice, up above, and then the modern town has developed by the water. And this is pretty much like that, except that Saint-Lizier is not like Eze. It is not overrun by tourists. It is a very much off-the-beaten-track kind of place, and yet it’s really, really interesting, and we both went together, early March…

Elyse Rivin: Right.

Annie Sargent: … and had a lovely time. The weather was absolutely gorgeous. We had a beautiful view onto the Pyrenees, snowed Pyrenees. It was absolutely lovely. I’ll share a photo on the episode page for that. Just beautiful place, but very small, so probably you would want to spend a half a day there, right?

[00:08:03] Historical Significance

Elyse Rivin: Right. It’s a good, very good, nice full half-a-day visit, and it’s a place you can even go with children. Basically it’s a tiny village that in and of itself is already divided into two parts, and part of it has a brand-new, very interesting small ethnology and cultural history museum that is attached to the cathedral, and it was very nice and very interesting and had a lot of stuff in it that was interactive. So, between that and the fact that there are grounds for running around, this is a place that you can do as a visit that is a family visit as well.

Annie Sargent: Yes, and the museum is really very new. I don’t remember…

Elyse Rivin: 2011.

Annie Sargent: Right, and it looks very nice. It’s very well-kept. I don’t remember if it’s open year-round.

Elyse Rivin: I believe that it’s only open on weekends and during the winter, and then everything pretty much in this little village starts at Easter time. And really runs right through into the end of October, pretty much half the year.

Annie Sargent: Right, right. So, by the time kids are done with their first school vacation, which normally ends early November at some point, then after Halloween, it’s winter again.

Elyse Rivin: It’s winter. It’s winter here, so…

Annie Sargent: Yes, yes.

[00:09:22] Things to Do in the Area

Annie Sargent: Other things you could do in this area. Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges is not very far. Saint-Girons is not very far. What else is…

Elyse Rivin: Well, there are lots of little hikes you can take in the area. I mean, there’s even a Grand Randonnee hiking trail that actually goes through parts of Saint-Lizier.

Elyse Rivin: I mean, it depends on which time of the year, but you can do a lot of outdoor things. There are places nearby where, I think, where you can even go horseback riding. You can see Roman ruins. You can go to Saint-Bertrand, which is medieval. It’s an area that is certainly not as well-known as some other parts of France, but it’s rich with things to see and do.

Annie Sargent: Right. And you know, we’re big believers in not sending all the visitors all to the same place.

Elyse Rivin: Absolutely.

Annie Sargent: We like to spread them around. We love visitors, but we don’t love it when they all go to the same place.

Elyse Rivin: Hm. No.

Annie Sargent: So that’s why we want to tell you about these extraordinary little villages,outside of, well outside of Paris. This is probably, what,eight hours’ drive from Paris, nine hours’ drive, something?

Elyse Rivin: Yeah. Well…

Elyse Rivin: We’re getting down there. You just keep going as the crow flies a little bit more, and you’re already in Spain.

Annie Sargent: It’s a lot closer to Spain than it is to Paris, yes.

[00:10:32] UNESCO World Heritage Site

Elyse Rivin: Yes. So Saint-Lizier is actually filled with things that are a part of the, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, believe it or not. It is now a tiny village that has less than 200 people full-year, year-round, up above. I’m going to be talking about not the part down below by the river, but what is the ancient village.

[00:10:53] Roman and Gallo-Roman Influence

Elyse Rivin: It is still half surrounded by its ancient, ancient walls, which are from the 300s, were built at the end of the time when it was still part of the Roman Empire, by the people that have come to be called, in France, the Gallo-Romans because, I don’t know if you remember this from any podcasts, but, you know, when the Romans came through here, they mixed with the local population.

Annie Sargent: Right, they did that in a lot of places, yeah.

Elyse Rivin: A lot of places. They were actually encouraged to do that, and so what happened was that it wasn’t all a one-way street in terms of culture…. The Romans brought in administration, law, an army, and the local Celtic populations added their own touches and their own little pieces of culture. And so, they melded together and created what is now officially called the Gallo-Roman society.

Annie Sargent: Right.

Elyse Rivin: And Saint-Lizier was a perfect example. It was founded by the Romans. Nobody knows exactly, there is a legend that it was Pompeii himself coming back from his conquest in Spain that founded the tiny site in 72 BC, but that isn’t probable.

Elyse Rivin: But what is true is that when the Romans came through, they established a series of small defensive towns in the foothills of the Pyrenees really running east-west from theMediterranean to the Atlantic, and largely for commercial purposes.

Elyse Rivin: And it’s became a series of roots that have now the vestiges of what was the local population, some of the buildings. And Saint-Lizier, believe it or not, still has a piece of the walls that were built at that time, that are almost a kilometer long.

Elyse Rivin: And it is rather remarkable because these walls are eight meters high, that is almost 30 feet, and two meters thick, and they’re made with local stone and mortar and some brick. And there are still 10 of the original 12 towers that surrounded the entire structure standing, not necessarily complete, but standing.

Elyse Rivin: There’s old enough of it that many of the buildings in the tiny town are still built into, and up against the walls.

Annie Sargent: Yeah, and you see the defensive wall very well when you visit the museum.

Elyse Rivin: Yeah.

Annie Sargent: You can park not far from … I mean, you can park right along that…

Elyse Rivin: Right along it.

Annie Sargent: … ancient wall, yeah.

Annie Sargent: It’s actually very fun. It’s beautiful.

Elyse Rivin: Yes. And as Annie said, we were extremely lucky because where it is situated, it’s situated on a top of a very steep hill that is on the southern side, that is on the northern side of the river. And so when you go up to the top, you have a view looking south into the Pyrenees mountains with the valleys in front of it, and on a clear day… on a clear day you can see forever.

Elyse Rivin: On a clear day you can see the different valleys and the peaks, and some of these peaks, of course, have eternal snow. They have snow even in the summertime. So it’s absolutely magnificent as a place to see, and gives you an idea of the majestic Pyrenees mountains, which are not something we talk about that often actually.

Annie Sargent: It’s true because there’s no, I mean, that’s the thing, we’re going to take a trip to the Basque Country, which is the other side of the Pyrenees, but there’s not that many major attractions along the Pyrenees. I mean, Lourdes.

Elyse Rivin: Yeah.

Annie Sargent: Pau.

Elyse Rivin: Pau. Tarbes if you really like horses.

Annie Sargent: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Elyse Rivin: And lots of tiny villages with teeny little churches that go back very, very, very far.

Annie Sargent: Right, so this is more for people who are spending a leisurely vacation in France and just want to take it easy and look around, just go do something fun one day without, you know… this is not for people who are checking things off their list.

Elyse Rivin: No, no. But there are lots of Roman ruins if you’re interested in Roman times. We visited a couple that are not that far from there. I mean, there’s plenty … if you want a countryside visit to a part of France that is really lovely and that is not filled to the brim with tourists and overpriced things, this is the kind of place to go.

Annie Sargent: Definitely. Yes. That would be high on my list for a leisurely, not touristy visit to France.

Elyse Rivin: Yes, exactly.

[00:15:21] Christianization and Bishops

Elyse Rivin: So, Le Saint-Lizier, it is a place that very quickly became Christianized as much of this area was.

Elyse Rivin: Once the local population became Christian, Saint-Lizier for whatever reasons, became a very important center of Christianity. And very quickly, starting in the 400s, was designated as a place to have a bishop. And of course if there’s a bishop that means that the church that is there is going to be a cathedral.

Elyse Rivin: And so whatever the initial first tiny little church was, by the time we get to the 700-800s, there’s a fairly important population. It’s very prosperous because they’re doing a lot of trading and they are well protected inside their walls.

Elyse Rivin: And so the bishops in this tiny little place become very important. And why is it called Saint-Lizier? Well, it turns out that the second bishop who probably lived in fact the end of the fifth century, the end of the 400s, his name in Latin was Lisserius.

Annie Sargent: Yes, I can see how … Yes, Lisserius to Lizier, yeah.

Elyse Rivin: Yeah. Just like Saint-Sernin in Toulouse was Saturnus.

Annie Sargent: Yes.

Elyse Rivin: And so the … It gets shortened and they’ll slightly change when you leave the Latin and you go into whatever the- you want to call the local language. And he was an extremely important bishop who lived a very long life, especially for the time, and was bishop, believe it or not, for over 45 years.

Annie Sargent: Yeah, that’s a long time back then, yeah.

Elyse Rivin: That’s a long time. And apparently, he was considered to be one of the most saintly people, which means that he helped the poor, he was good with everybody. He was a kind bishop, he was not a domineering … some of these bishops, you know, in the early times, these were s- were noblemen who were just given the job of being a bishop, because that’s the, they had enough importance in their family, and they weren’t necessarily really there for the people. Well, that was not the case with Saint-Lizier.

Annie Sargent: Right, some of the bishops, they were assigned to the role because they were the second or third son in a family of noblemen who had plenty of money, and of course they were not going to inherit the title, so they would just go into the seminary or into the church. And some of them were not really very religious people. But some of them were, and he’s one of those.

Elyse Rivin: And he’s one of those. He became a saint rather quickly after his death, but it was not until approximately 400 years later that the town officially took on his name.

Annie Sargent: Right.

Elyse Rivin: Don’t ask me what it was called before then, because I’m not sure I even know.

Annie Sargent: Yeah, we don’t know.

Elyse Rivin: We don’t really know.

[00:18:17] Exploring the Village

Elyse Rivin: But Saint-Lizier, okay, we’ve said it’s small. In spite of that, it’s divided into two parts. There is up above, we’re still above, that you have to imagine this hill that is almost like a cliff but not quite, with this magnificent walled village in two parts.

Elyse Rivin: So it kind of looks like a, an upside-down muffin cake, you know, where you have the top part that comes out wider on the bottom, and then it just kind of narrows and goes up higher. And when you can look at it from down below, what you see is the part that’s the highest up, which is this absolutely incredible bishop’s palace and second cathedral. And so when we visit the village, when you visit the village, you visit it basically in two parts.

Annie Sargent: Right, and there are two cathedrals in this tiny village, which is crazy.

Elyse Rivin: Which is crazy. And it’s one of the reasons why it became, why it was put on the UNESCO World Heritage List. But it’s also because of the quality of the architecture. So when you go up, and you drive up, and there’s two big parking areas, there’s no problem, let’s start with the lower part.

[00:19:25] The Lower Part of Saint-Lizier

Elyse Rivin: The lower part has the more ancient of the two churches. Technically, it’s still called a cathedral. Of course, it is no longer. It is still actually a functioning church, but it is not a cathedral. It was during the Early and Middle Ages.

Annie Sargent: Right, no bishop there now.

Elyse Rivin: No bishop there now. And this church is uh, in Romanesque style, and just to get an idea, and if you really have no idea of the different style periods, it means that it has a very, very rounded, very beautiful half-domed choir part. This is the part where you have the altar. And then the rest of it is just straight. There is no big side chapels or big tall pillars or anything like that. This is a church from, just about the year 1000.

Elyse Rivin: And they say that a lot of it was built with the ruins of other Roman structures that were lying around, because it’s built almost entirely of stone, except for a tiny little church tower or spire that was added on a couple of hundred years later in brick, which makes it kind of, almost a … It’s a kind of silly thing, but it’s the little Toulouse touch that we have in Saint-Lizier, you know?

Annie Sargent: Yeah. Yeah, it’s interesting-looking. I thought it looked very nice. I thought the older church needed a bit more ventilation.

Elyse Rivin: Yeah. Annie was disturbed by, there’s a certain amount of humidity in the older church. I think that in the summertime, it makes it easier because they keep the doors to the cloister open and there’s a lot of heat and sun that comes in. But yes, there’s a certain amount of humidity inside.

Annie Sargent: We were there early March, so it makes sense.

Elyse Rivin: And it makes sense, yeah. But one of the things that makes this church very special, and it really is from an architectural, historical, artistic point of view, is that it is filled, that is the entire choir with this rounded dome are filled with some of the largest and still intact frescoes from the 1000s anywhere in France. And particularly in the south, there is very little that you will see that looks like this. The imagery is large figures, in almost what is considered to be a Byzantine style, which was very frontal. I know a little bit about the different styles, and so of course it’s very exciting for me to see things like this. But they’re in excellent condition. They were cleaned up a little bit, but basically they’re pretty much, what you see is what was done a thousand years ago, and they are one of the special reasons that this church is so important. There’s also a cloister.

Annie Sargent: Yeah, yeah.

Elyse Rivin: A very nice little cloister. It’s not that big, but it’s got all its original columns and archways, and it’s very peaceful, as most cloisters are. It’s just a relatively small one. There was a second level added on, strangely enough, in the 1700s in brick. So down below it, you have this very beautiful stone cloister with these carved columns and everything. And added on as like an afterthought, that many hundreds of years later, you have this second layer that’s kind of like a gallery that runs around the top that’s made out of brick. The top you don’t have access to, but it’s easy to go, you go into the church, you visit the church, and then you can go into the cloister and take a look at it. And then from the cloister there’s a door that leads you into a small room that has some of the sacred objects that were kept in there.

Elyse Rivin: Because of course, this is from the time when it was actually the cathedral. And this is the cathedral that Saint-Lizier actually started, we can put it that way. And what’s interesting is that this is down below.

Elyse Rivin: And next to it, or actually right behind it, is a big building that was added on quite a number of hundred years later. I would say it was probably in the 1600s. And in that building, you have something that’s actually a curiosity that we both visited and enjoyed, and that is an apothecary shop.

Annie Sargent: Yeah, so, okay, how can we compare it? Like, if you went to Beaune, Les Hospices de Beaune…

Elyse Rivin: Right.

Annie Sargent: … they have a apothecary shop inside, and it’s that sort of thing, it’s just smaller.

Elyse Rivin: It’s smaller.

Annie Sargent: Yeah, it’s small, but it’s lovely. They have some really nice-looking jars?

Annie Sargent: … jars with all the names of the, all the Latin names of the herbs and things.

Elyse Rivin: And potions, you know.

Annie Sargent: Beautiful wooden cabinets.

Elyse Rivin: Right, beautiful woodwork, right?

Annie Sargent: I thought it looked very lovely and the gentleman who opened the door for us can give tours, you know?

Elyse Rivin: Yes. I think that it, of everything that is in Saint-Lizier, that is the only one where you have to go in with a group with one of the local guides. They don’t let you wander because I think they’re afraid of touching things. There’s a lot of fragile stuff inside there.

Elyse Rivin: But if you want to have an idea of what an ancient pharmacy was like, when people were still mixing together plants and minerals and whatever else, you know, and all of that, and just see how they categorized everything, it’s perfectly, everything’s intact. It’s very lovely to visit.

Annie Sargent: I will try to put some photos of the apothecary on Instagram or on Blue Sky or something like that.

Elyse Rivin: Then, it’s attached to a building that was probably finished by about the year 1700 that was a hospice that was turned into a hospital. So that’s the lower part of our tiny little ramparts around in Saint-Lizier.

[00:24:57] The Upper Part of Saint-Lizier

Elyse Rivin: And then you walk up, and you can walk up, there are actually two different ways. You can walk up by going up the large road that you can drive up with your car to actually park in front of the entrance to the museum and the bishop’s palace, or you can wander into the tiny, tiny little town.

Elyse Rivin: And it is very tiny. There are two or three streets that have some very interesting things. There is a huge clock tower. There are two or three houses that are actually from the 1500s and 1600s. It’s very cute.

Elyse Rivin: It’s just very, very tiny and precious. And when you get up to the top part, that’s where you get this spectacular view over the valley and over the Pyrenees. And there, what you have is a museum, a bishop’s palace, which is really where the museum is. You have a cathedral, and then you have something very unusual that you don’t see very often, and that is buildings that became in the 19th century and the 20th century, a psychiatric hospital.

Annie Sargent: Yeah, that was pretty striking. And they kept some of it intact so we would get an idea of what it was like to be in a psychiatric hospital back then.

Elyse Rivin: Yeah.

Annie Sargent: And let me tell you, I’m glad I wasn’t.

(Mid-roll ad spot)

Elyse Rivin: So, when you go to the top part, remember, you can walk up if you’ve parked down below or you, there is a parking area up above. You go into this entranceway which takes you through these fabulous ramparts, and then you have this very nice reception area where there’s also a nice little bookshop.

Elyse Rivin: And then you go from there, and what you do is you enter first, before anything else, you enter into what is now the museum.

[00:26:39] The Museum and Gastronomy

Annie Sargent: Right, and I really liked that museum. I thought it was very nice.

Elyse Rivin: It’s very nice. It is actually technically the Departmental Museum.

Annie Sargent: Oh, okay.

Elyse Rivin: Okay? So it’s run by the Department of Ariège. It is a cultural, ethnological, historical museum.

Annie Sargent: Right.

Elyse Rivin: It has a lot of interesting things and it’s very new, very modern, and interactive, and it’s really, really interesting. And so it had a huge collection of Roman coins and things from Roman times. It had a collection of clothing and costumes and shoes from medieval, late medieval times, which was very interesting.

Annie Sargent: Yeah, the coins were very interesting because you can really see them up close. They have this like, magnifying glass that you can slide over and take a good look. I thought it was really well done.

Elyse Rivin: It’s excellent. And there was a piece, I’m trying to remember what it was. I remember you were standing in front of one of the things that had some kind of thing that moved back and forth, and I’m trying to remember if it showed close-ups of some flooring or something like that. I can’t remember what it was, but there were lots of different things. Basically, the museum is on two floors, but it’s not huge. It’s just really, really good and really well done, and it’s just enough to get an idea of the cultural andethnological history of the area without being overwhelmed and without getting bored. Which makes it really interesting, you know?

Annie Sargent: Right, and right outside of that museum, there was also a kind of a gastronomic restaurant. Remember?

Elyse Rivin: Yeah, right.

Annie Sargent: We looked at the menu, and we didn’t eat there because the first thing on the menu was okra.

Annie Sargent: And neither of us like it.

Annie Sargent: And we were like “no.”

Elyse Rivin: No, that’s not… We kind of mutual, like, “No.”

Annie Sargent: But it was a beautiful little restaurant. It looked like…It would be cuisine soignée, so you’d probably pay 40 EUR or something per person. But lovely. Yeah, a good place for lunch. I’ll put in the show notes where we actually had our lunch, which was much more down to earth.

Elyse Rivin: Yeah. And further away, right?

Annie Sargent: Yeah, a little further away in the newer part of the village, and they’ve probably never heard of okra down there.

Elyse Rivin: So once you get done with the museum, you actually go through a doorway into part of what is the grounds of what was the cathedral and the bishop’s palace. I wouldn’t say a garden, because it doesn’t really have the feeling that it was that well kept up, but it’s filled with grass and everything. It’s just out of doors.

Elyse Rivin: And from there, you go around the corner and you see the vestiges of what was the original part of this second cathedral, the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de la Sede, which are these pieces that are left. There are two or three pieces of vaulting. And all of it’s made out of brick in the old, old Romanesque style. It’s kind of open to the air.

[00:29:34] Entering the Renaissance Cathedral

Elyse Rivin: But then you go through this doorway and you enter into a Renaissance cathedral.

Elyse Rivin: And the cathedral is very surprising, let’s put it that way. It’s mostly Gothic. It’s what’s called Southern Gothic, which means that there’s one big, big open space. There are no side aisles with narrowalleyways or anything like that. But it is actually considered to be the Sistine Chapel of the South of France.

Annie Sargent: Well, I thought the ceiling was very nice. Okay, not quite the Sistine Chapel.

Elyse Rivin: Not quite.

Annie Sargent: There won’t be people pushing you around either.

Elyse Rivin: No, no.

Annie Sargent: But it was very beautiful. I liked the scene that they had.

[00:30:15] The Sibyls and Their Significance

Annie Sargent: So they had all these figures of women that looked like Amazon, like, you know, warrior princess kind of women.

Elyse Rivin: And those are the Sibyls.

Annie Sargent: Yes, they’re called the Sibyls. And you mentioned in passing that it wasNotre-Dame de la Sede, and I should say that’s spelled S-E-D-E.

Elyse Rivin: S-E-D- S-E with an accent grave.

Annie Sargent: Yes.

Elyse Rivin: Yeah.

Elyse Rivin: So this cathedral was built by a different bishop, and then we’re talking now about the end of the 1400s, beginning of the 1500s. So this is way, way, way after the time of Saint-Lizier. And that bishop’s name was Jean d’Aula.

Elyse Rivin: And remember, bishops had enormous amounts of power and money, and they could do what they wanted. And what he did was he took this ancient, falling-apart cathedral and rebuilt it in what was, for him, modern style.

Elyse Rivin: And the modern style was Renaissance style with beautiful ribbed vaulting in the ceiling. And what you have then is he hired painters, the artists to do this, what is called program. He decided the theme for the paintings. It was very common apparently at the time. This is one of the ones that was in fashion at the time, was to do 12 figures. And the twelve, number 12 is considered to be a magical number anyway.

Annie Sargent: The 12 Apostoles.

Elyse Rivin: 12 zodiac and everything else.

Annie Sargent: That’s true.

Elyse Rivin: Yeah. And so he chose a theme that was very popular and common at the time, these 12 Sibyls, which were figures from antiquity that are supposed to have been able to predict the coming of the Savior, even though they lived to the 2000 years before that, you know? So that is there…

Elyse Rivin: Yeah. Well, you know, miracle.

Elyse Rivin: Yeah, yeah. I mean if you’re a Sibyl, you can do things like that, you know?

Annie Sargent: Exactly.

Elyse Rivin: You know? I mean, yeah.

Annie Sargent: Exactly. I like the one called Europa. She looked very mighty.

Elyse Rivin: Did she look mighty? Yes.

Annie Sargent: Yes, she did.

Elyse Rivin: And she had very large figures.

[00:32:14] The Art of Fresco Painting

Elyse Rivin: One of the things that’s really amazing about them, this is frescoes, and these are huge figures, very, very, very well done so that they fit the curve of the ceiling and come down the walls. But they’re large, these are not like what you see in veryold little chapels and things like that. And next…

Annie Sargent: But… Sorry, a fresco, this is something that they paint on wet stucco, isn’t it? How do you paint something that big on…

Elyse Rivin: A little bit at a time, with the scaffolding.

Annie Sargent: So you put stucco on a small area and paint it?

Elyse Rivin: Well, it’s actually plaster.

Annie Sargent: I was just reading about it, they were saying that they did an analysis of it, it’s a form of fresco. It’s a form of fresco that they were using live lime to make a kind of plaster. But the problem is, and this is one of the reasons why you have to be amazed when you see any of these works, doesn’t matter where you see them, is that you have to work very quickly. That is, you have to take… You basically grid off a section at a time, you have to have your sketching done already probably with charcoal or something like that so that you know what you’re doing, and you have to have everything ready, and then you take these pigments that are ground down and mix together usually with something like… very often they use things like rabbit glue and things like that, which is… Rabbit glue?

Elyse Rivin: Yeah, yeah. They used things that were basically animal that were a binder, and they… So that you could… Because otherwise if… All you have is powder, you can’t just… You can’t paint with powder.

Annie Sargent: Right.

Elyse Rivin: You have to have something, and it can’t be water. So it had to be something that would not dissolve, and spread so, you know, that would stay intact.

Elyse Rivin: Yeah, it doesn’t look like it’s spready. It looks like, I don’t know, it looks like they painted on top of something, but they really painted inside of…

Elyse Rivin: Yeah, inside it.

Elyse Rivin: And this is the reason why once they got to the late Renaissance, and this is of course first in Italy, and they discovered tempera, which is not using fresh plaster, and then oil paint. They didn’t do fresco anymore because it’s too much trouble and too much work and it’s too hard to do.

Elyse Rivin: You have to have an execution that is absolutely impeccable, you have to really know what you’re doing, and you have to work very, very, very fast.

Elyse Rivin: Because once the plaster sets, it just sucks up the pigment and it becomes one with the pigment. And if you go to museums like the Louvre or any of the museums in Italy, and you see, like you can do in Louvre, a chunk of wall that’s Fresco, they’ve cut the wall off. They’ve taken the entire wall to take it to the museum and put it there so you can see it.this is not like a, something on a canvas where you can just roll the canvas up and walk away with it, you know?

Annie Sargent: Yeah, yeah, it’s built into the wall. It’s like you do plaster and then you paint inside of your plaster.

Annie Sargent: Absolutely. That’s what it…

Annie Sargent: That just seems crazy to me that you could do that. And it doesn’t look like they had built a grid. It looks like somebody painted this whole massive figure of Europa, all in one, like, she looks like a great big Amazon or something.

Elyse Rivin: Yeah.

Elyse Rivin: An Amazon?

Elyse Rivin: That’s what, exactly. And next to her, in each of these sections of the vaulted ceiling, you have one of the 12 patriarchs of the 12 tribes of Israel, because at this time, that is in the 1400s, 1500s, these were the themes that were the most popular to use.

Elyse Rivin: And the Old Testament was used a lot, and antiquity was used a lot because they could say, “Well, these figures from antiquity, they were there to predict what was going to happen afterwards.” So it was perfectly okay to use things that were before Christianity.

Annie Sargent: Yeah, and the patriarchs also look very mighty, but you know, they’re more like older men with beards and things. They’re not quite as pretty as the big, massive women.

Elyse Rivin: Nah.

Annie Sargent: I like the Sibyls better. But the guys are also beautiful. I’m sure that they are perfectly executed and very, very nice, but yeah.

Elyse Rivin: In some of the work I was doing when I was taking some notes, it turns out that about not quite 100 years later, Rome decided that that was not cool to do Sibyls anymore.

Annie Sargent: Why?

Elyse Rivin: Because they were barbaric, they were from a time before Christianity and they were not supposed to be shown on the walls anymore. So they got them in and then that was basically the end of it, yeah.

Annie Sargent: Oh, yeah. Well, yeah, it’s not like they could take the painting down.

Elyse Rivin: No. So the church is absolutely, it’s not that huge. It’s one big open space. It’s very airy and light. The background colors are kind of beige. The colors of these figures are kind of oranges and very light warm colors. It’s really, really lovely.

Elyse Rivin: And the figures come down the sides of the walls. So you have the whole ceiling and the sides of the walls, and up at the front, since this bishop was able to redo pretty much everything, he had a whole bunch of what are called stalls, put in in the choir.

Elyse Rivin: And stalls are carved seats that the choir sits in, and they are magnificent, and they are all made out of walnut and oak, and they all are from the very beginning of the 1600s.

Elyse Rivin: So this church is really very carefully restored. They have done a lot of work on it in the last few years to clean it up. It is no longer, as I understand, but I may be wrong, it is no longer used as a church. It is now there to be visited and to be seen.

Annie Sargent: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

[00:37:43] The Psychiatric Hospital History

Elyse Rivin: Once you get done visiting this cathedral, then you go outside again into the grounds, and when you come around, you come to these very strange low-lying buildings, and that is where you have this very strange thing that is the space that was indeed the psychiatric hospital.

Annie Sargent: Right. So psychiatric care, I mean, there’s movies about this.

Annie Sargent: Like, it used to be very scary what they thought was okay to do with psychiatric patients. I don’t know anything about it, so I’m not going to make a lot of comments, but it looked pretty bad. They had these deep baths, like bathtubs, that they would give them baths into, like, what was this? Like, was it hot water, cold water?

Annie Sargent: What’d they do? I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t want to know. It looked not okay. But we have to, I mean, they have to preserve these things because this is the history of psychiatric care, which was not ideal.

Elyse Rivin: And again, like the Hospice of Beaune, it’s really a museum.

Elyse Rivin: What’s fascinating about this is that in the year 1801, Saint-Lizier lost its bishop. It was no longer qualified as being capable of having a bishop.

Elyse Rivin: The bishopric was moved to Foix, which is the biggest city in the Department of the Ariège. And they had all these buildings. They had the bishop’s palace that he lived in. They had this church, and instead of destroying it, this is what happened.

Elyse Rivin: Napoleon took power, and Napoleon made a law…. or decree, I’m sure it was more of a decree than anything else, he’s the one, of course, that created the departments in France, and he made a decree that each department had to have what he called a depot de mendicite, which meant that it was a place where the poor and the homeless could go.

Annie Sargent: Mm-hmm.

Elyse Rivin: And initially, it was destined to be just for that, that is for the homeless and the extremely poor, so that they had a roof over their heads and they could be given a minimal amount of care.

Elyse Rivin: What is interesting is that very quickly after that, it soon became a place where they would put people that were what we would call, mentally disturbed and what was called in the 19th century alienated, which is a strange and very disturbing word, you know?

Annie Sargent: Yeah, like they were somehow outside of themselves?

Elyse Rivin: Outside of themselves and outside of society really, you know?

Elyse Rivin: And so they took the Bishop’s Palace’s outbuildings, and they turned them into a place for the people. And little by little, it stopped being just for the homeless and became more and more just for the mentally ill.

Elyse Rivin: And so by the 1830s, that is what it was. And of course, this was a little bit before there was actually any idea of what real psychiatric treatment or care was.

Elyse Rivin: But by the middle of the 19th century, there were the beginning of what we would now call psychiatrists, and they were trying as much as they could with what they could understand to take care of these people.

Elyse Rivin: And interestingly enough, because it was also part of the thinking of the times, if they were not completely dysfunctional, they were actually sent out to work.

Annie Sargent: Huh.

Elyse Rivin: And so they lived in these hospitals, and they slept there, but they were given chores to do, usually manual things outside, thinking that being outside in the fresh air would help them.

Annie Sargent: Well, it would help me. It’d be better than being cooped up in those…

Elyse Rivin: Yeah, well, we saw a couple of the chambers and a couple of the other things that they used, and it was not very happy.

Annie Sargent: No.

Elyse Rivin: In the end, this place was used for a total of 158 years. It was actually closed in 1969.

Annie Sargent: Oh my God. I was alive then. I was… I was … we were both born in…

Elyse Rivin: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. According to the history of it, it was actually a regular full-blown psychiatric hospital as starting in the 1930s.

Elyse Rivin: So you have a long history with this building, and what they have decided to do, interestingly enough, just like with the other part that is museum, they decided to keep this as a testimony to the past.

Elyse Rivin: I think this is part of the idea that you can’t move forward until you really see how things were done in the past, you know?

Annie Sargent: Well, yeah. I think that’s true. I think you need to see what was done and understand the history and why we never want to do that again.

Elyse Rivin: Yep.

Elyse Rivin: So all together, up above in the higher part of this tiny Saint-Lizier, you have museum, you have a magnificent church that is a cathedral, you have this very strange other museum that is about psychiatry and treatment.

Elyse Rivin: And you have the grounds. And you have the ramparts from the Gallo-Roman times.

Elyse Rivin: And you can picnic there if you wish, because there are grounds for picnicking. There’s a little kind of a garden where you can climb up to the top and you have this very beautiful point of view. There’s this very fancy restaurant, also attached to the Bishop’s Palace.

Elyse Rivin: It’s very interesting, but it’s very quiet, you don’t hear very much noise except for some of the cars way down below in the valley. I found it very interesting the contrast between the different elements that you can visit in this tiny little town. It was really a lot. It was a lot when you think about it.

[00:43:22] Saint-Lizier Festivals and Events

Elyse Rivin: What I did discover too is that Saint-Lizier has two very interesting festivals. In the second half of May, it has a festival of sacred art and music.

Annie Sargent: Okay, nice.

Elyse Rivin: Which includes all kinds of concerts, recitals, food, conferences. It lasts for the whole second half of the month of May, and apparently it’s a fairly important festival, and each year it’s become a little bit more important.

Annie Sargent: Well, that’s great, but I’m too busy this year, I ain’t going anywhere.

Annie Sargent: No.

Elyse Rivin: No, you’re not going anywhere.

Elyse Rivin: And then in the fourth week of July through into the middle of August, there is a huge chamber music festival in Saint-Lizier, and some of the concerts take place in the Romanesque church in the lower part of Saint-Lizier, but there’s also music out in the streets and up above in the grounds of the higher cathedral.

Annie Sargent: Nice.

Elyse Rivin: And that is apparently a three-week-long festival of music.

Annie Sargent: So they probably have like weekend stuff. Usually when they do those long festivals, they don’t have something every day.

Elyse Rivin: Eh, I couldn’t find an exact program. This is as much as I could find, but they also said that they have a lot of other … you know, they have stands with food and things like that. And down below is very close to the small city called Saint-Jerome.

Elyse Rivin: On the first week of August, they have a huge street festival where they have street theater and jugglers and clowns and performances, and all kinds of things like that.

Elyse Rivin: So that tiny little area has a lot going on in July and August. It’s really the time of the year that is really, must be a lot of fun to go there, you know?

Annie Sargent: And it’s not super-duper hot most years. Sometimes it can get very hot, but… it’s not a part of France that is very hot generally, you know.

Elyse Rivin: I don’t know if we noticed it, but I’m sure the Saint-Lizier must be at least 400 meters high, which is already, you know, it’s like 12- 1,200 feet. It’s the kind of place where in the evening, it’s going to get cool, and cool enough to not be uncomfortable, you know.

Elyse Rivin: It’s really nice. And the only other thing, and it’s not directly connected to it, but I just have to add this because I just get such a kick out of it having only seen this once in my life. Very close by, there are some very tiny little villages.

[00:45:38] The Transhumance Festival

Elyse Rivin: This is a rural part of the country where you have lots of shepherds who have their flocks going up into the mountains, and there are lots and lots of tiny little villages really scattered everywhere.

Elyse Rivin: And it turns out that in the first and second weeks of June, so the first half of June, there is what is called in France The Transhumance, something you would never see in the United States under any circumstances.

Elyse Rivin: And this is whenthe different farmers take their sheep and their cows, and in this case even horses, and they take them up to high pasture land where the grass is green and where the air is cool.

Elyse Rivin: And so there’s a whole big festival. They have music, they have dancing, they have people wearing costumes. I’ve seen this once where they put flowers and all kinds of things on the cows and the head ewe that’s leading the group, you know, andthe horses, and there’s the people walking around playing music at the same time.

Elyse Rivin: And these animals, thousands of them, walk through the streets and walk all the way up, miles to go up into the high pasture land. So this is the kind of stuff that you can do that is so different from your typical trip to France.

Annie Sargent: Yeah, yeah. And typically, these transhumance, they also have some very nice dogs working the herds. So it’s fun to watch the dogs.

Elyse Rivin: Very beautiful. Very beautiful.

Annie Sargent: Yeah.

[00:47:01] The Scandal of the Curéde Saint-Lizier

Annie Sargent: One more thing. Before we went, I had looked up Saint-Lizier in the newspaper, which I like to do because, you know… and I found a ton of articles about the Curé de Saint-Lizier.

Elyse Rivin: Oh, that’s right. The recent… recent cure.

Annie Sargent: It’s pretty recent. It’s in the last ten years, I think.

Elyse Rivin: Yeah, 10 or 15. Yeah.

Annie Sargent: Yeah. He was a thief. He actually went to prison. And the lady… because when I mentioned it to the lady, she looked at me like, “Yeah, well, you know, we don’t like to talk about that.”

Elyse Rivin: We don’t like to talk about that.

Annie Sargent: But she said that, because, you know, he embezzled a ton of money and I wondered, how does a priest in a small place like this do that? And he used to say to his parishioners that he wanted ala quête silencieuse. La quête is when they get, when they go around asking…

Annie Sargent: When they pass around the basket, right? And silencieuse because he only wanted bills to be put in there, not coins.

Elyse Rivin: Ah, ah.

Annie Sargent: And he embezzled a ton of money.

Elyse Rivin: Yeah, this was apparently about 20 years ago when they… Yeah.

Annie Sargent: Yeah. Like 100,000 EUR or something, but he actually went to jail, so there you go.

Elyse Rivin: Well, we don’t want to end on such a bad note, you know?

Annie Sargent: I just thought it was interesting. If you look up the, you know, like news sites, you will find stuff about this.

[00:48:26] Exploring the Ariège Region

Elyse Rivin: But it is true that it is a lovely place to discover, and I encourage people to go off the beaten track, and if you have a week to spend with a car traveling around, it’s green, it’s clean. This is a part of the countryside where you have the majestic mountains behind you and wonderful surprises at every turn.

Elyse Rivin: And I’m sure the Tour de France goes through there some of the time. They must some of the time. Because that main drag that goes, you know… The main road down below.

Annie Sargent: Yeah, and I use it often because I, when I go to my brother’s country home, which is not far, but it’s in the Haute-Garonne, so it’s kind of close to the Haute-Garonne anyway, but it doesn’t matter. I mean, that’s justsomething that we notice, which department are we in.

Annie Sargent: Eventually, I think they’ll get rid of the departments, but there might be a revolution before then because French people really like their departments, even though they don’t do anything for us, really.

Elyse Rivin: It’s the number. It’s the number.

Annie Sargent: Yeah. We have a department number. So Haute-Garonne is 31. Ariège is 09.

Elyse Rivin: Yes.

Elyse Rivin: And go to the Ariège. It’s lovely. And Saint-Lizier is a wonderful, wonderful surprise.

Annie Sargent: Agreed. Thank you so much, Elyse.

Elyse Rivin: You’re welcome, Annie.

Annie Sargent: Au revoir.

Elyse Rivin: Bye.

[00:49:50] Thank You Patrons

Annie Sargent: Again, I want to thank my patrons for giving back and supporting the show. Patrons get several exclusive rewards for doing that. You can see them at patreon.com/joinus. I don’t have any new patrons to thank this week because I recorded this outro right after the previous ones.

Annie Sargent: But patrons are truly what makes it possible for podcasts like this to exist over the long term, so thank you so much.

Annie Sargent: Would you join them too? You can do it for as little as $3 a month, but if you can afford it, I would love to have you pledge more so you can have access to more of the rewards. Go to patreon.com/joinus.

Annie Sargent: And to support Elyse, go to patreon.com/elysart.

[00:50:39] Restricted Traffic Zones in Paris

Annie Sargent: Let’s talk about restricted traffic zones in Paris. Zone à Trafic Limité, ZTL. You might remember that it was launched in November 2024 in the very center of the city. I even mention it on my Eiffel Tower tour that I hope that years from now, it won’t be so noisy or so smelly in one of the roads that we cross.

Annie Sargent: And since that time they’ve made it impossible for cars and scooters to cut across the heart of Paris unless they actually stop there.

Annie Sargent: Buses, taxis, emergency vehicles, residents, and people making a stop are still allowed. What they don’t want is for people who go from one end of Paris to the next to go through the city instead of taking the belt route.

Annie Sargent: I understand why they want to do that. They want to take a look at Paris, it’s prettier than the belt route, okay?

Annie Sargent: Anything is prettier than the belt route, but it’s very bad, because it causes congestion, and it pollutes the city, and we need Paris to be cleaner. It’s already much cleaner than it used to be. We need it to be even cleaner.

Annie Sargent: The original plan was to have a six-month grace period. There were no fines during that time, but now the city has announced that the no ticket period is being extended all the way to 2026.

Annie Sargent: They’re calling this an extended pedagogical phase, basically giving people more time to get used to the rules. Even so, the city says that the trial period has already produced results, an 8% drop in traffic in the 4 central arrondissements.

Annie Sargent: Of course, not everyone is happy. The opposition group, Changer Paris, which includes Republicans, Centrists, and Independents, blasted the measure on social media, calling it a kafkaesque gas factory.

Annie Sargent: Yeah, that’s the gas factory, isn’t it? They say it won’t work. Well, they’re lying, it’s going to work. It has worked already.

Annie Sargent: When the ZTL was first announced, David Belliard, the Green deputy Mayor in charge of transportation, had explained that the first step would be education rather than punishment.

Annie Sargent: That seems to still be the philosophy.

Annie Sargent: And I have to say, in London, you have to actually pay cash to go across the city. And you know what? A lot of people are thinking about it. They’re, “Hmm, maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll go through some other way. I’ll take the tube, okay?” And on the political side, there’s disagreements about whether the ZTL should spread across all of Paris.

Annie Sargent: Remi Féraud, who ran in the Socialist primary, wanted to make it citywide. But Emmanuel Grégoire, who won the race, does not support expanding it. So, for now, if you’re driving in Paris, know that the ZTL rules are technically in place, but you won’t be fined until at least 2026.

Annie Sargent: And I hope that you’re not driving in Paris, for heaven’s sakes, why would you? It’s a terrible thing to do.

Annie Sargent: So, the reason why I’m recording this early, and that’s the reason why I don’t know exactly how many boot camp spots have been booked already, is that I’m off to Spain for a week with Jennifer Gruenke, who’s a good friend from Paris. We have been talking about her visiting me in Spain for a long time, and we’re doing it. It’s fun. And so I’ll get to rest my voice. I think I’m coming down with a cold. It’s terrible. My husband caught a cold. He went to the doctor’s and caught a cold and brought it home. Well, he needed the doctor’s visit, but I didn’t need the cold. Oh, well, what are you going to do?

Annie Sargent: My thanks to podcast editors Anne and Christian Cotovan, who produced the audio and transcripts.

[00:54:34] Next week on the podcast

Annie Sargent: Next week on the podcast, an episode about traveling solo in France at 70, budget tips and hidden gems with Elena Fedorek, the wonderful boot camper and a lady who is full of spunk, you’ll see, and full of great ideas. Now, she travels a lot, she doesn’t have an unlimited budget, and you know what? She makes it work and she has a great time.

Annie Sargent: And so, you don’t have to be 20 to travel fairly cheaply. You can do it at 70 as well, and nothing bad happens. It’s actually a good idea.

Annie Sargent: Thank you so much for listening, and I hope you join me next time so we can have a look around France together. Au revoir.

[00:55:18] Copyright

Annie: The Join Us in France travel podcast is written, hosted, and produced by Annie Sargent, and Copyright 2025 by AddictedToFrance. It is released under a Creative Commons attribution, non-commercial, no derivatives license.

 

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Categories: Occitanie, Off the Beaten Track in France, Toulouse Area