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Bastide (planned town)Lot-et-Garonne

Bastide de Saint-Pastour

Saint-Pastour

Dimensions
A plan of orthogonal streets on the ridge, the square and the church set off-centre, a former gate of the enclosure crowned with a statue of Joan of Arc, stretches of medieval wall, an old well, a wooden market hall, houses of white stone, the Cabirol manor with its mullioned windows of the 16th century, the castle, and the church of Saint-Pastour with its wide nave, its vaulted chapels, its seven-sided apse and its Renaissance doorway of 1530.
Period
Bastide founded in 1259 by Alphonse of Poitiers; English customs of 1289; enclosure of the end of the 13th or of the 14th century; church of the 15th and early 16th centuries with a Renaissance doorway of 1530.
What stands there
The church of Saint-Pastour has been inscribed as a monument historique since 1926, the church of Saint-Jean d'Aygues-Vives, Romanesque, of the 11th century and earlier than the bastide, since 1950. Saint-Pastour belongs to the Fédération des Bastides d'Aquitaine, which stresses its ridge position "controlling a junction of routes of communication".

Saint-Pastour, whose Occitan name denotes Saint Pasteur, stretches along a ridge twelve kilometres north-west of Villeneuve-sur-Lot, a position chosen to control a junction of roads. Alphonse of Poitiers founded a bastide there in 1259, the centre of a bailiwick, following the treaty of Paris of 1229 which had made him heir to the county of Toulouse. Having passed under English suzerainty in 1279, the town received from Edward I a charter of customs on 7 April 1289. The insecurity of the fighting between the two kings led to the building of an enclosure, flanked by a castle at the north-western angle. There remain a gate, crowned with a statue of Joan of Arc, stretches of wall and street names. The orthogonal streets, the wooden market hall, the old well, the houses of white stone, the Cabirol manor and the church of Saint-Pastour of the 15th century make up an intact and discreet village.

Further reading

Getting there : Free access to the village, to the gate and to the market hall; no tourist office, market day or opening times are documented in the texts.

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

Bastide de Saint-Pastour
Tomtomawais · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons

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In the same department

All places — Lot-et-Garonne (34).