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Bastide (planned town)Haute-Garonne

Beauchalot

Beauchalot

Dimensions
A street village of the Comminges hills around the church of Notre-Dame, inscribed as a monument historique. The texts describe neither a square with covered arcades nor a market hall; the plan of the plots is not documented. Between the village and the valley there survived a Gallo-Roman funerary pillar described at the beginning of the 19th century.
Period
Royal bastide founded in 1324 (1327 according to the Liste de bastides); church inscribed in 1950.
What stands there
The church of Notre-Dame has been inscribed as a monument historique since 1950. The bastide bears the name of its founder, Raoul de Chaillot, a rare case of a new town named after a royal commissioner; the present spelling is the result of an error in the cadastral survey of 1807.

Beauchalot is a small royal bastide of the Comminges, between Saint-Martory and Saint-Gaudens, whose very name tells of its foundation. It was created in 1324 by Raoul de Chaillot, knight and counsellor of the King of France and of Navarre, sent into the country as commissioner for the general reformation and charged with putting the paréage deed into effect. The new town received in Latin the name of Vallis Chaloti, the vale of Chaillot, which became Vau Chalot in French and then, the Gascon V being pronounced B, Bau Chalot; an error in the cadastral survey of 1807 turned it into Beauchalot. The village keeps its church of Notre-Dame, inscribed as a monument historique in 1950, and the memory of a Gallo-Roman funerary pillar more than forty feet high, described in 1814 by Alexandre Du Mège. A modest bastide, but one whose story of its name is among the most telling in the South-West.

Further reading

Getting there : Free access to the village. No tourist office or 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

Beauchalot
René Hourdry · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Nearby

In the same department

All places — Haute-Garonne (42).