Hauts LieuxChapels, sanctuaries & legends

Hauts Lieux›All places›Gers

Bastide (planned town)Gers

Bastide de Solomiac

Solomiac

Dimensions
The plan on two perpendicular axes, the 14th-century market hall with a hipped roof mounted on sixteen tall piers of dressed stone, at the centre of a square about a hundred metres on each side, surrounded by covered arcades of the 15th and 16th centuries; the church of Notre-Dame-de-la-Nativité rebuilt in the 17th and 18th centuries; the dovecote of Camusat. The wide water-filled ditches, the walls and the four gates described by the town hall have disappeared.
Period
Paréage of 1322, customs in 1327; 14th-century market hall, covered arcades of the 15th and 16th centuries; church destroyed in 1589, rebuilt from 1673 to after 1721.
What stands there
The market hall and the dovecote of Camusat have been inscribed as monuments historiques since 1973. According to the town hall, the fortified enclosure measured about two thousand metres from north to south and a thousand metres wide, with four gates.

Solomiac is a late bastide established in the plain, on the edge of the Gimone, in the east of the Gers. It was founded, it seems, by the abbey of Planselve, at Gimont, and by Béraud de Solomiac, the king's seneschal being directly involved in the creation on behalf of the crown in 1322; the town hall states that the paréage deed of 4 March 1322 committed the king and the abbey over five hundred arpents. A charter of customs of 27 July 1327 regulated markets and fairs. The plan, organised on two perpendicular axes, is modelled on that of the neighbouring bastide of Cologne, common to almost all the bastides of the valleys of the Arrats, the Save and the Gimone. The 14th-century market hall, on sixteen tall stone piers, surrounded by covered arcades of the 15th and 16th centuries, is its heart; the church, burnt by the Protestants in 1589, was slowly rebuilt.

Further reading

Getting there : Free access to the village.

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 Solomiac
Traumrune · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Nearby

In the same department

All places — Gers (34).