Hauts LieuxChapels, sanctuaries & legends

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Bastide (planned town)Ariège

Mazères

Mazères

Dimensions
The covered market of 1845-1851, with its remarkable timber frame, inscribed as a monument historique in 2004, occupies the square lined with 16th-century timber-framed houses; the market is held there on Thursdays. The hôtel d'Ardouin (1580), with its brick façades, mullioned windows and octagonal stair tower, houses the museum. In the rue Castellane, timber-framed and corbelled façades; brick ramparts partly preserved; the 17th-century tour Martimor.
Period
Paréage bastide of 1253, residence of the counts of Foix, woad in the 15th and 16th centuries, Protestant citadel, covered market of 1845-1851.
What stands there
A comital bastide of 1253, residence of Gaston Fébus; the hôtel d'Ardouin partly classified in 1955, the covered market inscribed in 2004. The museum of Mazères, in the hôtel d'Ardouin, shows among other things the furnishings of a Visigothic and Frankish necropolis and the history of woad.

On the borders of the Ariège and the Lauragais, on the Hers, Mazères is a bastide created in 1253 by an act of paréage between the count of Foix and the abbot of Boulbonne, whose Cistercian abbey then stood on the site. The counts made it a favourite residence, where Gaston Fébus stayed and where Gaston de Foix-Nemours was born; of the comital castle nothing remains. For two centuries the cultivation of woad made the town's fortune, and it produced twenty tonnes of woad balls in 1462; the hôtel d'Ardouin, built in 1580 by a woad merchant, is its finest witness. The Huguenots destroyed the abbey of Boulbonne in 1567, and Mazères became a very strong Protestant citadel until the middle of the 17th century. Around the covered market of 1845-1851, the 16th-century timber-framed houses give the square its character.

Further reading

Getting there : Free access to the village; traditional market under the covered market on Thursdays. Museum of Mazères in the hôtel d'Ardouin, 22 rue de la République.

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

Mazères
ArnoLagrange · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons

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In the same department

All places — Ariège (25).