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Bastide (planned town)Dordogne

Bastide de Domme et sa porte des Tours

Domme

Dimensions
The 13th-century ramparts, listed in 1943, still encircle the plateau; the town is entered through the Porte des Tours, remodelled in 1381 with a space for the portcullises, through the Porte del Bos and through the Porte de la Combe. The grid plan is laid out around two squares; the market hall houses the entrance to the cave that served as a refuge during the Hundred Years' War and the Wars of Religion. The church of Notre-Dame-de-l'Assomption, the 16th-century wall-walks and the Belvédère de la Barre complete the ensemble.
Period
French royal bastide founded in 1281; 13th-century ramparts, Porte des Tours (a prison from 1307) remodelled in 1381, wall-walks reworked in the 16th century.
What stands there
Ramparts listed as monuments historiques in 1943; monolithic chapel of Caudon registered in 1948; Château de Caudon registered in 1998, with a park classed as a Jardin remarquable. Domme is a member of the Plus Beaux Villages de France and belongs to the Fédération des Bastides d'Aquitaine. The census of 1365 credited it with 205 hearths. Around a hundred graffiti are carved into the stone of the Porte des Tours.

Perched on a cliff above the Dordogne, ten kilometres south of Sarlat, Domme is the French royal bastide of the Périgord Noir. Philip III the Bold founded it in 1281 on a plateau whose western end already bore a castle; constrained by the cliff, it did not adopt the usual rectangle of the bastides but a trapezoidal plan. The town obtained fairs and the privilege of minting its own coinage. Taken by the English in 1347, it changed hands several times until 1437, then fell by surprise in 1588 to the Protestant captain Geoffroy de Vivans, who scaled the cliff by night. Its 13th-century ramparts, its three gates including the monumental Porte des Tours, its market hall, its refuge cave and the Belvédère de la Barre make it one of the Plus Beaux Villages de France.

The Porte des Tours and its graffiti. Founded in 1281 by Philip III the Bold atop a cliff overlooking the Dordogne valley, this royal bastide saw its Porte des Tours, originally built to guard the town, turned into a prison on Friday 13 October 1307: that day, a wave of arrests ordered by Philip the Fair struck the Knights Templar across the kingdom, and as many as 70 Templar knights are said to have been held here until 1318, awaiting a fate sealed by the burning at the stake of their last grand master, Jacques de Molay, in 1314. On the walls of their cell, the prisoners scratched with a nail or a stone dozens of graffiti laden with religious symbols — crosses, figures, inscriptions — whose Templar authenticity, popularised in 1970 by Canon Tonnelier, is today the subject of an archaeological counter-investigation commissioned by the municipality itself, which may well date some of these graffiti to a later period.

Further reading

Getting there : Town freely accessible. Weekly market on Thursdays. Paul Reclus Museum of Folk Art and Traditions on the Place de la Halle; the cave is visited from the market hall. Paid entry to the Porte des Tours.

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 Domme et sa porte des Tours
Krzysztof Golik · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

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In the same department

All places — Dordogne (80).