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Bastide (planned town)Aveyron

Bastide de Sauveterre-de-Rouergue

Sauveterre-de-Rouergue

Dimensions
The central square of 40 metres by 60, entirely bordered by covered arcades; the streets of timber-framed houses on corbels, sometimes ornamented with stone bas-reliefs; the shaded ring road with two gates, a corner tower and the remains of the ditches; the collegiate church of Saint-Christophe, inscribed in 1999, with its 15th-century stalls, its flamboyant Gothic retable of the early 17th and its carved pulpit.
Period
Paréage of 1280, foundation in 1281, charter in 1284; bailiwick in 1301; ramparts completed in 1319; English occupation 1362-1369; plague of 1628; chef-lieu of a district in 1790.
What stands there
Collegiate church of Saint-Christophe inscribed as a monument historique in 1999. One of the five bastides of Rouergue, reputed the best preserved. Around 1425 some thirty smith-cutlers worked there; only six were left in 1556.

In the heart of the Ségala, thirty kilometres from Rodez, Sauveterre-de-Rouergue is an exceptionally well preserved royal bastide. Founded in 1281 by Guillaume de Mâcon, seneschal of Rouergue and representative of Philippe le Hardi, a year after a paréage treaty by which the king asserted his suzerainty, it received its charter of franchises in 1284. Each settler received a plot to build on, a garden and a field; in some forty years the town reached its greatest extent, became the seat of a bailiwick in 1301 and completed its towers and walls in 1319. Its square with covered arcades, its timber-framed houses, its two gates, its corner tower and its ditches make up an almost intact ensemble. Ceded to the English in 1362, bought back in 1369, it was afterwards a town of cutlers.

Further reading

Getting there : Village with free access; tourist office at the espace Lapérouse, with a model and a craft trades centre. Weekly market on Sunday mornings, night market on summer Fridays.

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 Sauveterre-de-Rouergue
1gagnepetit · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Nearby

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In the same department

All places — Aveyron (20).