Yesterday a mining town, the Carmausine city remains proud of this epic that stirred up nationalities and forged its identity. The Jaurès Monument, the Château de la Verrerie, the “bureau de la Mine”, the “Centrale”, the Candou Park, the railway station and its brick walls… as places of memory that today constitute a remarkable heritage.

Despite the coal recession, Carmaux was gradually able to erase the stigma of the trauma and turn to the future: its wide avenues, its flowery squares, its cities and its rehabilitated parks, its aquatic center the Odyssey, its new cinema complex in the heart of the city… show this willingness to offer its inhabitants and visitors a pleasant living environment, facilities and attractive leisure spaces. Steeped in tradition, the lively Friday morning market where city dwellers and Ségalis rub shoulders, the Saint-Privat festivities and their dazzling floral corso, the Foire de la Sainte-Barbe… are part of a dense and varied programme of activities.

Natural border between the departments of Tarn and Aveyron as it was once between the Albigeois and Rouergue, between Gascogne and Languedoc, the Viaur Valley cuts deeply the plateau of Ségala. Its winding route alternates between wild gorges and wider parts where the river seems to calm down: throughout its course, it offers the visitor particularly remarkable natural sites.

From the highlands of Aveyron to the gates of the Gaillacois, the Ségala Tarnais offers to the visitor an extraordinary diversity of soils and landscapes: to the north, the Ségala proper, vast primary plateau cut by deep gorges; further to the south, beyond the Cérou, change of scenery! Here are the first whitish outcrops of the scalloped limestone plateau whose platform overlooks the Albigensian basin.