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Bastide (planned town)Gers

Bastide de Saint-Clar

Saint-Clar

Dimensions
The grid of the Bastide neuve, three north-south streets and three east-west streets, with at the centre the market hall and town hall with its 18th-century wooden roof timbers, surrounded by garlandes, and its communal house rebuilt in 1818; the Château-Vieux with its narrow streets and low half-timbered houses, with the former 12th-century church, altered in the 14th, which keeps nine funerary recesses; the neo-Gothic church of Saint-Clair built from 1857 to 1864 to the designs of Hippolyte Durand.
Period
Castral nucleus and church of the 12th century; bastide of 1289; roof timbers of the market hall of the 18th century and communal house of 1818; neo-Gothic church of 1857-1864.
What stands there
The market hall and town hall has been inscribed as a monument historique since 1986. An English bastide born of a paréage between the Bishop of Lectoure and the king-duke, whose confrontation between spiritual and temporal power shaped the quarters still legible on the ground.

Saint-Clar, in the Lomagne, in the north-east of the Gers, is a town of three quarters. The Château-Vieux, the original nucleus, gathers its narrow streets and its low half-timbered houses around the comital castle and the former 12th-century church, altered in the 14th. The Bastide neuve was founded in 1289 following a paréage between Géraud II de Montlezun, Bishop of Lectoure and lord of the place, and the Duke of Aquitaine, King of England: three north-south streets and three east-west streets form a grid at the centre of which stands the market hall surrounded by covered galleries, the garlandes, which served above all for communal meetings and deliberations. The Bastide vieille, laid out in the Middle Ages north of the village, offers a fine view over the valley of the Arrats. Saint-Clar is also the garlic capital of the Gers.

Further reading

Getting there : Free access to the village. Traditional market on Thursday morning; garlic market on Thursday morning from July to the end of September and garlic festival on the first Thursday in August; museum of the state school in the village's first school.

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 Saint-Clar
AubdaX · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

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In the same department

All places — Gers (34).