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Bastide (planned town)Haute-Garonne

Bastide de Boussens

Boussens

Dimensions
The original layout on two parallel axes, still visible on the cadastral plan of 1825, around the former village fort of the 14th century. The church of Saint-Exupère keeps a north chapel and a font from the time of the bastide; the chapel of Saint-Roch in the cemetery, the chapel of Notre-Dame du Rosaire, known as the Gleize vieille, and the chapel of Saint-Michel near the former quarries of Cabardos complete the ensemble, along with an old washhouse.
Period
Bastide founded in 1269, village fort of the 14th century; river port until the 19th century; industrialisation from the end of the 19th century.
What stands there
No protection as a monument historique is reported in the texts. Until the railway Boussens was a very active river port on the Garonne; the ancient site has yielded Gallo-Roman remains.

Boussens occupies a strategic site where the Garonne, emerging from the Petites Pyrénées, receives the Salat. The Gallo-Romans already had a temple, a market and a port there, on the frontier of Narbonensis and Aquitania. In 1269 the Count of Comminges Bernard VI and the abbot of Bonnefont founded in paréage a bastide intended to control navigation on the river opposite the confluence. The village, laid out along two parallel axes still legible on the cadastral survey of 1825, was given in the 14th century a small village fort, that body of the town which a document of 1637 still cites, comparable to those of Alan and Palaminy. An active river port until the coming of the railway, a Catholic watch post during the Wars of Religion, Boussens keeps the church of Saint-Exupère, of which a north chapel and the font go back to the time of the bastide, and three country chapels, Saint-Roch, Notre-Dame du Rosaire and Saint-Michel.

Further reading

Getting there : Free access to the village, to the outlying chapels and to the banks of the 60-hectare lake. 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 Boussens
Patrice Bon · CC0 · Wikimedia Commons

Nearby

In the same department

All places — Haute-Garonne (42).