Explorer Salses-le-Château

The Fort de Salses is a fortress north of Perpignan, built by the Crown of Aragon at the end of the 15th century to guard the frontier between Catalonia and France. Its low, thick walls, round towers and deep ditch mark the move from medieval castle to artillery fort; the French took it in 1642, and visitors explore the keep, courtyard and ramparts.

Perpignan Cathedral is a southern Gothic church begun in 1324 under King Sancho of Majorca and consecrated in 1509; it became a cathedral in 1602, when the bishop's seat moved from Elne. Its single nave is 80 metres long and 26 metres high, and an 18th-century wrought-iron bell cage crowns the tower. The Campo Santo cloister-cemetery adjoins it.

The Castillet is a brick fortress gate built around 1368 to defend a new entrance in Perpignan's town walls; the smaller Porte Notre-Dame was added beside it in the 1480s. Later a state prison, it has housed the Casa Pairal, a museum of Catalan folk arts and traditions, since 1963, and its turret gives a view over the city and the Roussillon plain.