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Bastide (planned town)Pyrénées-Atlantiques

Navarrenx

Navarrenx

Dimensions
The bastioned enclosure of 1538-1549, classified, with its four bastions, its bartizans, its countermines and the porte Saint-Antoine remade in 1645; the Poudrière, the military fountain; the arsenal of 1680, which houses the interpretation centre; the grid plan inherited from the charter of 1316; the 16th-century church of Saint-Germain, flamboyant Gothic, with its cagots' door; the 16th-century maison Paillé; the 13th-century bridge over the gave d'Oloron.
Period
Bridge and market of 1188; bastide charter of 1316; bastioned enclosure of 1538-1549; siege of 1569; arsenal of 1680; fortified town until 1871.
What stands there
Bastioned enclosure and maison Paillé protected as monuments historiques. The first village of the Béarn to receive the Plus Beaux Villages de France label, in October 2014. First chief town of the department of the Basses-Pyrénées, from 4 March to 14 October 1790. A fortified town from 1546 to 1871. Seat of the Fédération des Bastides d'Aquitaine.

On the bank of the gave d'Oloron, facing Navarre, Navarrenx is the first bastioned town in France and combines a bastide charter with an enclosure in the Italian manner. In 1188 Viscount Gaston had a stone bridge built there and a market instituted, and in 1316 Viscountess Marguerite, having granted the charter of customs of Morlaàs, endowed the town with a bastide charter of which the central square and the right-angled streets keep the memory. After the sack by the Castilians in 1523, Henri II d'Albret, king of Navarre, had bastioned ramparts of 1.66 kilometres raised from 1538 to 1549 by the Italian engineer Fabricio Siciliano, on the model of Lucca; they allowed the Huguenots to hold out against the royal army during the siege of 1569. A stage of the via Podiensis towards Compostela, and a Plus Beau Village de France since 2014, Navarrenx keeps its porte Saint-Antoine, its powder magazine, its arsenal and its Gothic houses.

Further reading

Getting there : Freely accessible town; broad wall-walks along the ramparts. Interpretation centre in the arsenal, rue Saint-Germain. Tourist office of the Béarn des Gaves. A welcome drink is offered to the pilgrims of Compostela every evening from Easter to All Saints' Day.

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

Navarrenx
Asp. · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons

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In the same department

All places — Pyrénées-Atlantiques (24).