Bastide de Sainte-Livrade

Sainte-Livrade-sur-Lot

Sainte-Livrade-sur-Lot spreads along the left bank of the Lot, ten kilometres west of Villeneuve-sur-Lot. The site has been occupied since the early Iron Age and a monastery is attested there in 1117; an enclosure exists in 1271, and the tour du Roy, a brick tower with buttresses of the end of the 12th century, passes for a survival of the fortifications raised under Richard the Lionheart. It was on this already ancient town that the king of England had a bastide established in 1289, whose jurisdiction extended over a radius of about five kilometres; the Fédération des Bastides sees in it an example of "the close intertwining of a bastide and what went before it". The church of Sainte-Livrade, with its Romanesque chancel of the 12th century altered in the 14th, is classified as a monument historique. The cradle of the Agen prune, the town has placed on one of its squares the Déesse de la Prune carved by Paul Belmondo.

Getting there : Free access to the town and to the surroundings of the tour du Roy. Market on Friday and gourmet markets in July and August according to the Fédération des Bastides; no opening times are documented.

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

Ambient sound