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Bastide (planned town)Gers

Bastide de Lannepax

Lannepax

Dimensions
A rectangular plan drawn out from east to west, of great regularity. Many houses with timber framing and embans (porticoes) from the rebuilding after 1453. Remains of walls and ditches. The church of Saint-Jacques, of the 14th century and the end of the 15th, listed in the Mérimée database. The central market hall, which sheltered the communal house, disappeared in 1707; the town gates disappeared at the end of the 18th century.
Period
Bastide of the second half of the 13th century, attested in 1290; rebuilt after 1453; market hall demolished in 1707; fortifications gone by the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century.
What stands there
Church of Saint-Jacques listed in the Mérimée database; the village is the subject of a regional Inventory file (2013). A comital bastide, one of the few in the Gers founded by the Armagnacs facing English Aquitaine.

Between Vic-Fezensac and Condom, Lannepax, "the heath of peace", is a fortified bastide of the counts of Armagnac, established before 1290 on the hill of Ario, at the crossing of the Ténarèze, a very ancient ridge road, and the Roman road from Toulouse to Bordeaux, where the count levied tolls. The proximity of English Aquitaine had dictated the choice of site. Its rectangular plan, drawn out from east to west, is of great regularity; the walls and ditches have left traces, and many houses with timber framing and embans date from the rebuilding that followed the Hundred Years' War, after 1453. The market hall that sheltered the communal house at the centre of the square was demolished in 1707. The church of Saint-Jacques, of the 14th and 15th centuries, recalls the pilgrims received by a hospital outside the walls. Legend has it that Crassus received here the submission of Novempopulania.

Further reading

Getting there : Free access to the village. Tourist office and market not documented in the texts.

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 Lannepax
WCOMFR Mireille GRUMBERG · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Nearby

In the same department

All places — Gers (34).