Hauts LieuxChapels, sanctuaries & legends

Hauts Lieux›All places›Dordogne

Bastide (planned town)Dordogne

Monpazier

Monpazier

Dimensions
The rectangular grid is laid out around the place des Cornières, surrounded by arcades and by houses of the 13th–17th centuries; the market hall there still keeps its grain measures. The church of Saint-Dominique, built from the 13th to the 16th century, holds a 14th-century font and a bell of 1476. The maison du Chapitre, or tithe barn, three of the six fortified gates and stretches of rampart with ditches, documented from 1289, complete the ensemble.
Period
English bastide founded by paréage in 1284; church and ramparts under construction from 1289; church of Saint-Dominique of the 13th to the 16th century; Récollets convent in 1644.
What stands there
Thirty-two houses and sites protected as monuments historiques, a conservation area, a member of the Plus Beaux Villages de France, awarded the Ville et Métiers d'Art label in 2019. The census of 1365 credited Monpazier with 315 hearths, the most populous of the bastides of the Périgord. Regarded by Viollet-le-Duc as the model bastide.

On a plateau between the Dropt and the Dordogne, Monpazier is the model bastide of the South-West, the one Viollet-le-Duc held to be exemplary. On 7 January 1284 (1285 by the modern calendar), Jean de Grailly, seneschal of Guyenne, acting for Edward I, signed with Pierre de Gontaut, lord of Biron, the paréage that founded a town on "Mont Pazier". The rectangular grid plan has remained intact: the place des Cornières lined with arcades and with houses of the 13th to the 17th century, the market hall with its grain measures, the church of Saint-Dominique contemporary with the foundation, the maison du Chapitre, three of the six fortified gates. Taken by Geoffroy de Vivans in 1574 and the scene of the execution of the croquant Buffarot in 1637, Monpazier brings together thirty-two buildings protected as monuments historiques and is one of the Plus Beaux Villages de France.

Further reading

Getting there : Town freely accessible. Weekly market on Thursdays. Le Bastideum, an interpretation centre, presents the history of the bastides.

Opening times and access details are given as a guide only: check before you set out.

See it on the map OpenStreetMap Directions

Ambient sound

Monpazier
Mairiemonpazier · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Nearby

This place in the great stories

In the same department

All places — Dordogne (80).