The region

The name comes from the town of Laurac which in the XI and XII century was the capital city (‘castrum’) of the region followed by Castelnaudary and then Saint Paul. The middle ages were  times when the cathar religion was much in evidence in the Lauragais. The region is branded with the terrible memories of the repressions committed by the crusades against the Albigeois, but it took another full century under the catholic throne of France to fully eradicate  all traces of the cathar heresy. Identity with the Lauragais however was loudly expressed right up until the start of the 20th. century. In the 1920s many communes added the ‘Lauragais’ name to their towns. The best known to-day are Villefranche-de-Lauragais and Saint-Félix-de-Lauragais.  Before cereal production the main wealth of the region between the years 1462 and 1562 was the pastel from whence the nickname pays de cocagne came from (the shell ‘la coque’, was a dried ball of the pastel plant used for giving the pastel blue color to textiles). The richest families from Toulouse plucked this gold from the fields of the Lauragais which financed the splendid architecture of some of the dwellings we see to-day in Toulouse. Other trump cards of the region include; meat and its celebrated Lauragais veal, but also the ‘salaison de la Montagne Noire’ (salted meats of the black mountains).

Sitting astride four departments (Aude, Ariége, Haut-Garonne and the Tarn), the Lauragais benefits from an exceptional waterway known as the canal du Midi. This man made waterway constructed in the XVII century by the famous Pierre-Paul Riquet is now part of the United Nations Human Heritage. Water is to be seen in lakes which supply the canal du Midi: Noticeably those of Saint Ferréol, Lampy and the Cammazes. Yellow sunlight radiates over the Lauragais. It is the numerous fields of sunflowers, maize and rape which gives the tonal color to the countryside.

The Lauragais is also valued for its industrial activity: a brick factory near Castelnaudary, of furniture production in Revel or more modern activities such as the service industries around Labège Innopole, near Toulouse, which in a short time, has seen the creation of thousands of jobs.