French bastide towns sprawl across southwest France in their hundreds. Recognisable for their formulaic layout and their medieval architecture, they were once ‘new towns’ that established communities and brought an order to society in a post-feudal France.
Some were built by the French, others by the Kings of England. And although the earliest bastides were built in peace time, later ones were built as fortified towns while others had fortifications added when the Hundred Years War set in. The churches of preserved bastide towns were also often fortified intentionally to provide a safe haven for the community should the outer town walls or gates submit to attack.
Today, the bastide towns of France are a tourism attraction. Visitors are welcomed to discover a period of French history that blazed a trail for modern French society and brought much needed prosperity from trade.
What is a bastide town?
Bastides are small towns built around a central square out from which scales a grid-like street system surrounded by farmland worked by the townspeople.
Bastide towns were first built following the Treaty of Paris in 1229 at the end of the Cathar Crusade. The aim was to bring a sense of societal structure to south-west France, which had been largely decimated by 20 years of fighting. A previously scattered population was invited to dwell in the town; the purpose being to make it is easier to rule over them.
For roughly two centuries thereafter at least 500 bastide towns were established where previous settlements had existed or nearby – some estimate that as many as 700 once existed with some falling to ruin.
How are bastide towns laid out?
Visit almost every bastide town and you’ll identify the central square immediately. Many also have a market hall and arches creating a sort of sheltered arcade for traders skirting the square. The town church invariably towers above all of this.
The layout of a bastide town is thought to include some Roman influence as seen in places like Aigues Mortes where the Roman grid system and walled city are clear to see still today. But the focus of the bastide layout around a central square is thought to have been a Moorish influence.
The central square naturally created a trading hub and marketplace. The roads that surrounded the square and led through the outer grid system were designed with carts in mind for transporting goods; as such they are still now referred to as carriageways.
Where can I see a bastide town?
There are hundreds of bastide towns across Aquitaine and Occitanie in south-west France. You’ll find the most examples of bastide towns in the Lot et Garonne. Yet there are fabulously preserved examples or particularly pretty ones stretching from the Dordogne in Aquitaine across to the Aveyron in the northern Midi-Pyrenees right the way down to the Pyrenees Atlantique and the border with Spain.
Perhaps the most visited bastide in the south is eclipsed by its fame as the largest medieval chateau in Europe, the Cité de Carcassonne in the Aude region. If you cruise the Canal du Midi aboard a hotel barge or a self-drive hire boat, this ancient bastide is a fairytale must-see. The lower town of Carcassonne is also called Bastide Saint-Louis.
It’s closely followed in fame by the citadel of Aigues Mortes, also intact enough to imagine how it became the Mediterranean launch-pad for Louis 1X’s seventh and eighth Crusades the 13th-century.
> Explore the city on your cruise in the Camargue aboard Le Phenicien
Our favourite bastide towns in France
Montauban
Montauban is another example of the bastide towns of southwest France. Situated on the Tarn River, it’s become a major modern town. The Place National at its centre is the place to gather, with many cafes and shops beneath its arched arcades, rain or shine. Hotel barge Saint Louis moors along the branch canal close by, and if you take your own boat down to the port from Montech you’ll see the striking pink sandstone buildings of Montauban as you walk cross the Pont Vieux into town for provisions.
Mirepoix
Aboard Savannah cruises, you’ll be taken into the hills of Ariege to visit the remarkable bastide of Mirepoix. It has one of the finest surviving arcaded market squares, Les Couverts, in France, bordered by beautiful half-timbered houses dating from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries. It is one of France’s truly striking medieval towns.
Montpezat & Saint-Sardos
In 1323, Raimond-Bernard de Montpezat from a tiny hilltop bastide provoked the battle of Saint-Sardos, which would lead directly to the Franco-English conflict of the Hundred Years War. Both villages, though declining in population, are a delight to visit with wonderful views across the surrounding farmlands.
How to visit French bastide towns
French bastide towns form an exquisite element of our luxury hotel barge itineraries but are equally accessible for our self-drive hire boating clients too. However you choose to cruise the regions of France, we can point you in the direction of the best bastide towns on your route.
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