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-Jaurès. By the rather unremarkable old
cathedral, the former bishop's palace holds the Hôtel de Ville and
Castres' Musée Goya (July & Aug daily 9am-noon & 2-6pm;
rest of year closed Mon; €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 Velázquez.
Castres' other specialist museum is the Musée Jean-Jaurès
(same hours as the Musée Goya; €1.52), dedicated to its famous native
son. It's located in place Pélisson, and getting to it takes you
through the streets of the old town, past the splendid
seventeenth-century Hôtel Nayrac , on rue
Frédéric-Thomas. The museum was opened in 1988 by President Mitterrand
- appropriately enough, because Mitterrand's Socialist Party is the
direct descendant of Jaurès' 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. Jaurès supported Dreyfus , founded the newspaper L'Humanité
, 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'Humanité , 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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