Supermoon facts…A “supermoon” is the coincidence of a full moon (or a new moon) with the closest approach the Moon makes to the Earth on its elliptical orbit, or perigee, leading to the technical name for a supermoon of the perigee-syzygy of the Earth-Moon-Sun system. Today, the moon will be up to 14 percent bigger and 30 percent brighter than the other full moons of 2012, according to NASA.

Effect on tides facts…The association of the Moon with both oceanic and crustal tides has led to claims that the supermoon phenomenon may be associated with increased risk of events such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. However, the evidence of such a link is widely held to be unconvincing!

The Sarrasin occupation provided inspiration for one of the best-known legends of the Middle Ages…

The emperor Charlemagne laid siege to Carcassonne, then ruled by the Sarrasin king Ballak, who was succeeded after his death by his wife, “Dame Carcas”. The town had already been under siege for 5 years when famine overcame the last of its defenders. So alone Dame Carcas kept watch from the ramparts. To give the illusion that the city remained well guarded, she made straw figures and dressed them as soldiers and fired arrows at the besieging army.

All that remained in the town was a little pig and one sack of wheat. Dame Carcas fed the pig with all the wheat and then threw it from the ramparts! At the sight of such a well fed fat animal, the amazed assailants concluded that the inhabitants had plenty of food and probably weren’t going to surrender any time soon. Charlemagne called off the siege in despair. But before the huge army had quite disappeared Dame Carcas rang the bells of the city to celebrate victory.

Many believe that Dame “Carcas sonne” (Dame “Carcas rings”) is where the name of the city came from. Dame Carcas is now memorialized in a neo-Gothic sculpture near the Narbonne Gate…

First signs of settlement in this region have been dated to about 3500 BC. The hill site of “Carsac” (Celtic name) became an important trading place in the 6th century BC. Carcassonne became strategically important when Romans fortified the hilltop around 100 BC.

The fortification consists of a double ring of ramparts and 53 towers.

The entrance has a drawbridge and  the walls have towers built over quite a long period. One section is Roman and is notably different from the medieval walls with the tell-tale red brick layers and the shallow pitch terracotta tile roofs. One of these towers housed the Catholic Inquisition in the 13th Century and is still known as “The Inquisition Tower”. Today there is a museum “Musée de la Torture”, which shows some of the original torture equipment employed by the Catholic Church. The narrow winding lanes of the City also have many Restaurants, Cafes, souvenir shops etc.

Restoration: Carcassonne was struck off the roster of official fortifications under Napoleon and the Restoration, and the fortified cité of Carcassonne fell into such disrepair that the French government decided that it should be demolished. A decree to that effect that was made official in 1849 caused an uproar. The antiquary and mayor of Carcassonne, Jean-Pierre Cros-Mayrevieille, and the writer Prosper Mérimée, the first inspector of ancient monuments, led a campaign to preserve the fortress as a historical monument. Later in the year the architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, already at work restoring the Basilica of Saint-Nazaire, was commissioned to renovate the place.

In 1853, works began with the west and southwest walling, followed by the towers of the porte Narbonnaise and the principal entrance to the cité. The fortifications were consolidated here and there, but the chief attention was paid to restoring the roofing of the towers and the ramparts, where Viollet-le-Duc ordered the destruction of structures that had encroached against the walls, some of them of considerable age. Viollet-le-Duc left copious notes and drawings on his death in 1879, when his pupil Paul Boeswillwald, and later the architect Nodet continued the rehabilitation of Carcassonne. Viollet-le-Duc’s achievement at Carcassonne is agreed to be a work of genius, though not of the strictest authenticity.

Carcassonne is a popular tourist destination and has around 3 million visitors a year  .  .  .  See our favourite Hotels in Carcassonne 

The festival lasts a few days and includes parade of floats decorated with lemons and oranges etc, marching bands, dancers and folk groups.  The Casino Gardens in the centre of town are decorated in the theme of the festival, using fruit to cover the exhibits, and huge temporary statues are built and covered with citrus fruit.

The Festival takes place every February and follows a different theme each year.  Past themes include Viva España, Disney, Neverland, and India.

Fête du Citron – Lemon Festival: This year is the 79th year and the theme is “Menton welcomes the regions of France”. It runs from February 17 to March 7 2012

The sale of the 1895 painting “The Card Player”s has almost doubled the previous record-setter, Jackson Pollack’s “No. 5″, 1948, which fetched $140 million in 2006.

Cézanne’s painting was done in Aix-en-Provence in the South of France. It shows Provençal peasants immersed in smoking their pipes and playing cards. The two cardplayers are focused their card playing, eyes cast downward, intent on the game at hand.

Cézanne adapted a motif from 17th century Dutch and French genre painting which often depicted card games with rowdy, drunken gamblers in taverns, replacing them instead with stone-faced tradesmen in a more simplified setting. Whereas previous paintings of the genre had illustrated heightened moments of drama, Cézanne’s portraits have been noted for their lack of drama! Other than an unused wine bottle in the two-player versions, there is an absence of drink and money, which were prominent fixtures of the 17th century genre.

The painting that was sold was one of five versions of paintings of card players. The models for the paintings were local farmhands, some of whom worked on the Cézanne family estate, the Jas de Bouffan. Each scene is depicted as one of quiet, still concentration; the men look down at their cards rather than each other, perhaps the cards being their sole means of communication outside of work. One critic described the scenes as “human still life”, while another speculated the men’s intense focus on their game mirrors that of the painter’s absorption in his art.

In his painting’s Cezanne captured both spatial depth and pattern at once, earning him the stature, according to Matisse, as “a benevolent God of painting.”

In 2010, Qatar opened its Arab Museum of Modern Art, and the Qatar National Museum, currently closed for renovation but reopen in 2014. That’s where this Cézanne painting could end up,  perhaps alongside some famous artworks by Warhol, Rothko and Hirst that the Qataris have also been snapping up in an art buying spree!