Hauts LieuxChapels, sanctuaries & legends

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Bastide (planned town)Tarn

Bastide de Saint-Sulpice-la-Pointe

Saint-Sulpice-la-Pointe

Dimensions
The straight streets and orderly gâches of the bastide; the 14th-century church with its bell-gable of 40 metres, on the site of the former square with covered arcades; the ruins of the chapel of the Castela castle, built about 1240; the medieval underground passage of the Castela; the Rustan bridge dating from the Hundred Years' War; a dovecote of 1810; the mill weir on the Agout; a suspension bridge of the 19th century.
Period
Bastide built from 1243 to 1247; franchises of 1279; bell-gable begun in 1381; castle destroyed in the 17th century.
What stands there
Medieval underground passage of the Castela inscribed as a monument historique in 1994. A 13th-century ivory triptych from the church, kept at the musée de Cluny since 1893. A commune of 9,674 inhabitants in 2022, 32 km from Toulouse.

At the point of land where the Agout joins the Tarn, Saint-Sulpice is among the first bastides of the Albigeois. A land of the counts of Toulouse given to the abbey of Aurillac and granted in fief in 1200 to Dieudonné d'Alaman, it was built in four years, from 1243 to 1247, by Sicard Alaman, governor of the domain of the last two counts, who drew inhabitants by concessions and endowed the town with a castle, a convent and a hospital; Bertrand, viscount of Lautrec, granted it franchises in 1279. A bastide of the plain with a political rather than a defensive purpose, it keeps its straight streets and its orderly gâches, but its square with covered arcades has gone, giving place to the church, whose bell-gable of 40 metres was begun in 1381 under Gaston Fébus. Beneath the Castela, the ruin of the castle of 1240, opens a medieval underground passage inscribed as a monument historique.

Further reading

Getting there : Free access to the town. Village festival on the first weekend of August. No tourist office or market is 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 Saint-Sulpice-la-Pointe
Didier Descouens · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Nearby

In the same department

All places — Tarn (23).