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Bastide (planned town)Aude

Bastide de Saint-Louis

Saint-Louis-et-Parahou

Dimensions
The pass village overlooking Parahou, the redoubt and the spiral bridge noted by the tourist office, the church of Saint-Louis, the state forest of Les Fanges, a former royal forest. No protected monument is noted by the texts.
Period
Royal foundation around 1300; forest of Les Fanges reserved to the king in 1688; union with Parahou between 1790 and 1794.
What stands there
A royal frontier bastide of Philippe le Bel; the village lies on the Paris-Carcassonne meridian. The forest of Les Fanges, "one of the finest in the kingdom", supplied the royal navy.

Perched on a pass in the Pyrénées audoises, above Parahou, Saint-Louis is a royal bastide established by Philippe le Bel to control the frontier between Roussillon, then a land of the king of Majorca and afterwards of Aragon, and the upper valley of the Aude. The list of bastides places its foundation in 1300. The village commanded the crossing: a redoubt and a spiral bridge beyond the pass keep its memory. When the frontier moved away, the bastide lived by the forest of Les Fanges, a former royal forest of which the king became the sole owner in 1688 in order to regulate its working and to supply timber for the navy. The commune, with some forty inhabitants today, brings together Saint-Louis and the former commune of Parahou, absorbed between 1790 and 1794; the col de Saint-Louis, at 696 metres, opens on to the Fenouillèdes.

Further reading

Getting there : Village with free access; tourist office of the Pyrénées audoises. No market 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 Saint-Louis
Jcb-caz-11 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Nearby

In the same department

All places — Aude (41).