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Bastide (planned town)Hautes-Pyrénées

Tournay

Tournay

Dimensions
The plan of right-angled streets of the new towns; the place d'Astarac, the centre of the village, with the Francis Jammes house; the church of Saint-Étienne, with a doorway beneath a porch decorated with carved coats of arms and a bell-tower; the market hall; the protohistoric tumuli of Ozon and Tournay; the abbey of Notre-Dame de Tournay, established in 1952 in a bend of the Arros, with its cloister, its church and its bookshop open to visitors.
Period
Royal paréage of the Sunday of the Assumption 1307; destruction during the Wars of Religion and rebuilding; convent of the Minims in 1591; plague cemetery in 1632.
What stands there
A royal paréage bastide founded to counter the château de Mauvezin, the chief town of a canton of 18 communes after 1789. Its name is a transfer of that of Tournai in Flanders, in commemoration of a victory of Philip the Fair.

In the centre of the Hautes-Pyrénées, on the Arros, Tournay is a royal bastide born of a paréage agreed on the Sunday of the Assumption 1307 between Bohémond d'Astarac and the seneschal of Toulouse, representative of Philip the Fair. The king needed a fortified town in the neighbourhood of the château de Mauvezin in order to counter its influence; he gave it the name of the Flemish town of Tournai in memory of one of his victories and granted the inhabitants rights over land. There remains from that time the general plan of the town, with its right-angled streets, typical of the new towns. Destroyed during the Wars of Religion, Tournay was rebuilt on its present site; the Minims settled there in 1591 on the site of the castle for more than two centuries. The place d'Astarac, the church of Saint-Étienne, the market hall and the house of Francis Jammes form the heart of the town.

Further reading

Getting there : Town freely accessible; the abbey of Notre-Dame de Tournay opens its cloister, its church and its bookshop to visitors according to its own times.

Opening times and access details are given as a guide only: check before you set out.

See it on the map OpenStreetMap Directions

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In the same department

All places — Hautes-Pyrénées (17).