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Bastide (planned town)Dordogne

Villefranche-du-Périgord

Villefranche-du-Périgord

Dimensions
The bastide, stretched along its plateau edge, keeps its central square lined with houses of the 13th and 14th centuries built on arcades, houses of the 15th and 16th centuries and the consuls' tower of the 16th century. The market hall, rebuilt in 1818, keeps its Tuscan columns and its grain measures. The church of Notre-Dame-de-l'Assomption, raised in 1864 by Paul Abadie, holds a gilded Virgin and a processional cross. The ramparts disappeared in the 18th century.
Period
Bastide founded in 1261; walls around 1290, destroyed in the 18th century; market hall rebuilt in 1818; church rebuilt in 1613 and then in 1864.
What stands there
The market square listed as a site in 1971, the bastide as a whole listed over eight and a half hectares in 1986; the church of Saint-Étienne-des-Landes inscribed as a monument historique in 2002. The first bastide of the Périgord by its date, 1261, a member of the Fédération des Bastides d'Aquitaine. The commune was called Villefranche-de-Belvès until 1893.

On a wooded ridge of the Périgord noir, on the boundary of the Quercy and the Agenais, Villefranche-du-Périgord is the oldest bastide of the Périgord. Alphonse de Poitiers, count of Toulouse and brother of Saint Louis, signed its charter on 3 February 1261, near the church of Viel-Scieurac, to create Villefranche de Belvès on the road to Cahors. Passed to the Plantagenets by the treaty of 1279, girdled with walls around 1290, destroyed and weakened by the Hundred Years' War, besieged by the Huguenots in 1577 in an assault in which the young Sully nearly perished in a ditch, the bastide has kept its central square lined with houses on arcades of the 13th and 14th centuries, its market hall rebuilt in 1818 with its Tuscan columns and its grain measures, and its consuls' tower of the 16th century. The capital of the chestnut and the cep, it houses the Maison de la Châtaigne next to the tourist office.

Further reading

Getting there : Town freely accessible. Tourist office and Maison de la Châtaigne. Weekly market on Saturday mornings; local producers' market on Tuesday evenings.

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

Villefranche-du-Périgord
MOSSOT · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons

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All places — Dordogne (80).