Hauts LieuxChapels, sanctuaries & legends

Hauts Lieux›All places›Landes

Bastide (planned town)Landes

Sorde-l'Abbaye

Sorde-l'Abbaye

Dimensions
The layout of the bastide: parallel streets around a central space, remains of walls and of fortified gates, the suburbs of the Bourg Neuf and of Maubourguet; a few rare houses of the 14th century; the abbey of Saint-Jean with its 10th-century bell-tower, its apse and its apsidal chapels of the 11th and 12th centuries, its Romanesque mosaics, its capitals, its cloister with three galleries, its cryptoporticus open towards the gave; beneath the buildings, the baths of the Gallo-Roman villa.
Period
Gallo-Roman villa of the 3rd and 4th centuries; abbey attested in 975; toll bridge in 1289; bastide by paréage in 1290; destruction in 1523 and 1569-1570; Maurist rebuilding from 1663-1665; ruin at the Revolution.
What stands there
The abbey is classified as a monument historique and has been inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list since 1998 under the routes of Santiago de Compostela; its surroundings form an inscribed site. The Gallo-Roman mosaics are classified and the grotte Duruthy has been so since 13 April 1962. Sorde is a member of the Fédération des Bastides d'Aquitaine.

Sorde-l'Abbaye occupies a terrace on the bank of the gave d'Oloron, four kilometres south-east of Peyrehorade, on a crossing used since prehistory: the Gallo-Romans built a large villa there in the 3rd and 4th centuries, and the pilgrims of the voie de Tours crossed the gave at this point. The Benedictine abbey of Saint-Jean, attested by a charter of 975, regulated the crossings by building a toll bridge in 1289. The following year, on 16 December 1290, the abbot concluded a paréage with Eustache de Beaumarchais, seneschal of the king of France, who placed the town under Capetian protection in the face of the English king-duke: Sorde became a bastide. The town keeps its parallel streets, remains of walls and of fortified gates, two old suburbs, and above all the abbey with its 10th-century bell-tower, its Romanesque chevet, its mosaics of the 11th and 12th centuries and its Roman baths, inscribed on the World Heritage list.

Further reading

Getting there : Free access to the village. The abbey can be visited; opening times and prices not documented. A stage on the voie de Tours of the road to Compostela.

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

Sorde-l'Abbaye
Traumrune · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Nearby

This place in the great stories

In the same department

All places — Landes (27).