The tower of the cathedral is modern and, taken as a whole, is undeniably effective with its iron cage and bell-rack. The original tower fell two centuries ago during an extra violent blow of the tramontane.
Passing centuries have changed Perpignan but little, and aside from the boulevards and malls the streets are narrow and tortuous and almost devoid of sidewalks. There are innumerable little bijou houses of Gothic or Renaissance times, and in one narrow street, called quaintly Main de Fer, one sees a real, unspoiled bit of the sixteenth century. One curious house, now occupied by the Cercle de l’Union, dates from 1508, and was erected for one Sancho or Xanxo. Its interior, so far as its entrance hall and stairway are concerned, remains as it was when first built.
The Rue Père Pigne has a legend connected with it which is worth recounting. The Père Pigne, or Pigna, as his name was in Catalan-Spanish days, was a cattle-herder in the upper valley of the Tet, beside the village of Llagone. Weary of his lonely life he whispered to the rocks and rills his desire for a less rude calling elsewhere, and the river took him up in its arms and washed him incontinently down on to the lowland plain of Roussillon, and, by some occult means or other, suggested to the old man that his mission in life was to found there a fertile, prosperous city. Thus Perpignan came to be founded.
There may be doubts as to the authenticity of the story, but there was enough of reality attached to it to have led the city fathers to name a street after the hero of the adventure.
Since the demolishment of its walls Perpignan has lost much of its mediæval character, but nothing can take away the life and gaiety of its streets and boulevards, its shops, its hotels and cafés. Perpignan comes very near being the liveliest little capital of old France existing under the modern republic of to-day.
The population is cosmopolitan, like that of Marseilles, and every aspect of it is picturesque. The vegetable sellers, the fruit merchants, the water and ice purveyors, all dark-eyed Catalan girls, are delightful in face, figure and carriage. Their baggy white coiffes set off their dark complexions and jet black hair. The men of this race are more serious when they are at business (they are gay enough at other times) and you may see twenty red onion or garlic dealers and never see a smile, whereas an orange seller, a woman or girl, always has her mouth open in a laugh and her headdress is always bobbing about; nothing about her is passive and life to her is a dream, though it is serious business to the men.
The taste of the Catalans of Perpignan for bright colouring in their dress is akin to that of their brothers and sisters in Spain. The fact that both slopes of the Eastern Pyrenees were under the same domination up to the reign of Louis XIII may account for this.
The Citadelle of Perpignan is closed to the general tourist. None may enter without permission from the military authorities, and that, for a stranger, is difficult to obtain. The great gateway to the Citadelle is a marvel of originality with its four archaic caryatides. Within is the site of the ancient palace of the kings of Majorca, but the primitive fragments have been rebuilt into the later works of Louis XI, Charles V and Vauban until to-day it is but a species of fortress, and not at all like a great domestic establishment such as one usually recognizes by the name of palace.
The Église de la Real, beside the Citadelle, was built in the fourteenth century and is celebrated for the council held here in 1408 by the Anti-Pope, Pierre de Luna.
There are some bibliographical gems in Perpignan’s Bibliothèque which would make a new-world collector envious. There are numerous rare incunabulæ and precious manuscripts, the most notable being the “Missel de l’Abbaye d’Arles en Vallespir” (XIIth century) and the “Missel de la Confrere,” illustrated with miniatures (XVth century), worthy, each of them, to be ranked with King René’s “Book of Hours” at Aix so far as mere beauty goes.