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Bastide (planned town)Lot-et-Garonne

Bastide de Sérignac-sur-Garonne

Sérignac-sur-Garonne

Dimensions
A plan that is organised but not straight, enveloping the earlier village; the arcaded square and the rue des Cornières with their houses of timber framing and brick; the church of Notre-Dame-de-l'Assomption, Romanesque, with its doorway archivolt, its dome beneath the bell-tower and its apse, surmounted by the helical twisted spire covered with slate; the manors of Menjoulan, of Rozières and of Jouanisson; the mooring point on the canal de Garonne.
Period
Romanesque church cited in 1062, doorway of 1060; bastide founded in paréage in September 1273; enclosure before 1359; twisted spire of the end of the 15th or of the 16th century, remade in 1988-1989.
What stands there
The twisted spire of Sérignac is presented by the Fédération des Bastides d'Aquitaine, of which the commune is a member, as "unique in Aquitaine"; it was rebuilt in 1988-1989 by the compagnon carpenters of the Tour de France. No protection as a monument historique is mentioned in the texts.

Sérignac-sur-Garonne, formerly Sérignac-d'Agenais or Sérignac-en-Bruilhois, borders the Garonne and the canal latéral twelve kilometres west of Agen. The village owes its name to a Roman centurion, Sérignus, and possessed as early as 1062 a Romanesque church ceded to the Cluniac priory of Layrac. In September 1273 Gaston VII, viscount of Béarn, and the abbot of Figeac, prior of Layrac, founded there in paréage a bastide endowed with customs, which enveloped the pre-existing core of settlement: the streets are organised but not straight, and the square keeps its arcades and its houses of timber framing and brick in the rue des Cornières. The treasure of the village is the church of Notre-Dame, Romanesque, with its carved doorway of 1060, crowned by a twisted spire unique in Aquitaine, which turns through an eighth of a turn on its octagonal base; struck by lightning in 1921, it was remade in 1988-1989 by the compagnons of the Tour de France.

Further reading

Getting there : Free access to the village, to the square and to the surroundings of the church. Tourist information on the town hall website (serignac-sur-garonne.fr, tourism section) according to the Fédération des Bastides; no market day or 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

Bastide de Sérignac-sur-Garonne
MOSSOT · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Nearby

In the same department

All places — Lot-et-Garonne (34).