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Bastide (planned town)Gers

Bastide de Marciac

Marciac

Dimensions
A plan on two axes of the Gascon model, the church set back from the central square. The arcaded square, the largest in the Gers (133 m by 78 m), lost its market hall in 1871. The church of Notre-Dame-de-l'Assomption, Gothic of the 15th century, with a square porch tower of 87 metres, the tallest in the department. Of the Augustinian convent there remain the octagonal bell-tower of the 14th century, the façade and the doorway. The chapel of Notre-Dame-de-la-Croix, a place of pilgrimage.
Period
Royal bastide founded in 1298, customs confirmed in 1300; convents and hospitals in the 14th and 15th centuries; held to ransom in 1569; market hall demolished in 1871.
What stands there
Church of Notre-Dame-de-l'Assomption classified as a monument historique in 1910; Augustinian convent partly classified in 1910 and inscribed in 1928, the façade of its church inscribed in 1949. The largest bastide square in the Gers and the tallest bell-tower in the department. The cloister of the Augustinians is said to have been bought by William Randolph Hearst and to be in California.

In the south-west of the Gers, Marciac is a royal bastide founded in 1298 following a paréage between Étienne de Lupé, abbot of La Case-Dieu, Arnaud-Guilhem III, Count of Pardiac, and the seneschal of Toulouse Guichard de Marzé, who built the town, gave it its customs, confirmed in 1300 by Philip the Fair, and left it his name. A bastide on two axes of the Gascon model, the church set back from the square, it is laid out within an oval rectangle of 598 metres by 394 enclosed by 1,750 metres of ramparts pierced by eight gates. Its arcaded square, the largest in the Gers at 133 metres by 78, could hold a thousand soldiers; its market hall was demolished in 1871. The church of Notre-Dame-de-l'Assomption, Gothic of the 15th century, raises the tallest bell-tower in the department, 87 metres, and the octagonal bell-tower of the Augustinians recalls the convents that peopled the new town.

Further reading

Getting there : Free access to the arcaded square and to the surroundings of the church. 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 Marciac
Pantxoa · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Nearby

This place in the great stories

In the same department

All places — Gers (34).