Bastide

The Bastides of the South-west are small towns, mostly built in the thirteenth century when this part of France, previously a vast virgin forest, was being populated. Some of them were built by local aristocrats, some by the King of France, the King of England as Duc d'Aquitaine, or the Bishops of the region. Many were constructed by mercenary soldiers who named them after their own homeland – hence, for example, Cologne and Grenade. The typical bastide is square, built on a grid plan like an American small town, with one block left empty for a market and another for the church. Many were originally walled, in others the houses at the edge were fortified. There are few detached houses in a Bastide; solid blocks are more easily defensible. Rarely, there is also a castle or a small fortress.

One of the distinguishing features of the Bastide is the arcades round the market square, locally known as couverts. These are formed by replacing the walls of the front rooms of each house with stone or brick arches or wooden pillars and beams, depending on the local availability of materials. The arcades give cooling shade in the hot summers of the region. There is almost always a Café des Arcades.

Bastides are peaceful places today, but their medieval past is invariably a catalogue of horrors, as they were disputed and fought over by local Counts, the Kings of France and England (and occasionally Spain and Navarre), Catholics and Protestants and anybody else who needed a stronghold. They were, however, rarely destroyed.

Examples in this website are Beaumont-de-Lomagne, Cadours, Mauvézin, Cologne, Gimbrède, Saint-Clar, Montauban, Villeneuve-sur-Lot, Pujols, Solomiac and Mazamet among others.