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Bastide (planned town)Lot-et-Garonne

Puymirol

Puymirol

Dimensions
A plateau once girdled by an enclosure of 790 metres, of which fragments applied to the rocks survive, skirted by the walk round the walls, and the tour Ficart at the south-eastern point. Orthogonal streets with elongated blocks, the place des Cornières with its old well, three wells in the central street, the church of Notre-Dame du Grand-Castel with its porch and its bell-tower of the 13th century, the site of the citadel to the east, and houses with broken arcading or with pilasters from the 13th to the 17th centuries.
Period
Fairs cited in 1100; Grand Castel founded in 1246 by Raymond VII; customs of 1286; sieges of 1324 and 1337; citadel of 1575; church rebuilt in the 17th century; ramparts demolished under Louis XIV.
What stands there
The church of Notre-Dame du Grand-Castel has been inscribed as a monument historique since 2003, the château de Pech-Redon since 2008, and an old house since 1951 for its façade and its roof. The Fédération des Bastides d'Aquitaine, of which Puymirol is a member, describes it as "an example of transition between castral villages and bastide".

Puymirol occupies a long limestone plateau fourteen kilometres east of Agen, the Podium ad Mirandum of late antiquity, "the mount from which one sees". In 1246 Raymond VII, count of Toulouse, created there, on ground ceded by the bishop of Agen, a stronghold which he named Grand Castel, an advanced post on the boundary of the Toulousain and the Agenais after the treaty of Paris of 1229. The first-born of the bastides of the Agenais, the town belongs as much to the castral village as to the new town: an enclosure of 790 metres followed the outline of the plateau, pierced by four gates, around a grid of streets and a square with cornières provided with a well. Besieged in vain in 1324, taken in 1337 in the first act of the Hundred Years' War, a place of surety of Henri IV, Puymirol keeps the tour Ficart, stretches of rampart, the church of Notre-Dame du Grand-Castel and fine old houses.

Further reading

Getting there : Free access to the town and to the walk round the walls. A local producers' market is held on Saturday evenings in the summer months according to Wikipedia; the Fédération des Bastides reports a truffle market and a municipal museum of mineralogy. No opening times are documented.

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

Puymirol
Jacques MOSSOT · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

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All places — Lot-et-Garonne (34).