Bastide

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Lisle-sur-Tarn ( Tarn )
Labastide-d'Armagnac ( Landes )
Sauveterre-de-Rouergue ( Aveyron )

Bastide ( Occitan : bastir = "to build") is the name of the cities of Occitania founded in the Middle Ages and largely built in one go . H. in southwest France . Its founding followed economic, political or military considerations.

features

A characteristic feature of the 400 or so village and town complexes, which were mainly built between 1222 and 1373, is a strictly rectangular street grid with a central market square , which is lined with arcaded houses. In addition, the strategically favorable location on a knoll or a plateau that is raised compared to the surrounding landscape profile is characteristic. Well-known bastides include Carcassonne (but not the fortress , which is outside the area of ​​the original bastide) and the Andorran capital Andorra la Vella . Villeneuve-sur-Lot in the French region of Nouvelle-Aquitaine is now considered the largest bastide . Legally, the bastides were fortified villages with market rights when they were founded .

Historical background

The bastides initially emerged as a reaction to the conflicts between France and England since the marriage of Henry Plantagenet , later King Henry II of England, to Eleanor , the heiress of Aquitaine in 1152, and then also to the depopulation of large areas of Occitania by the Albigensian Wars . As a result, a large part of western and southern France came under English rule. The bastides were supposed to offer protection to the rural population threatened by robberies and wars in a newly built and reinforced village complex; at the same time they documented the presence and readiness to defend the respective sovereign. The English themselves also founded bastides in the area they occupied. Many of the later bastides were planned and carried out as joint projects ( paréages ) between the regional secular and ecclesiastical rulers (e.g. Beaumont-de-Lomagne , Grenade (Haute-Garonne) , Gimont , Beauregard (Lot) and others).

Early bastides

Several bastides are arguing about which was the first: The founding of Mont-de-Marsan (1133) and Montauban (1144) are now mostly viewed as isolated events; Saint-Félix-Lauragais (1167) and Lauzerte (1194) are also considered to be forerunners. Today one tends to believe that the foundations of Cordes-sur-Ciel and Castelnau-de-Montmiral in 1222 by Raimund VII were at the beginning of the more than 400 bastides in southwest France, as a real wave of foundations began shortly afterwards.

Cordes-sur-Ciel ( Tarn )
Monpazier ( Dordogne )

Founder of Bastiden

Bastiden to Département (selection)

Castelnau-de-Montmiral ( Tarn )

Others

The bastides of Occitania (especially Labastide-d'Armagnac ) may have been models for the square or rectangular town squares in northern France in the 17th century and later (see Place des Vosges in Paris ) and surrounded by arcaded houses .

See also

literature

  • Wim Boerefijn:  The foundation, planning and building of new towns in the 13th and 14th centuries in Europe. An architectural-historical research into urban form and its creation. Phd. thesis Universiteit van Amsterdam 2010.  ISBN 978-90-9025157-8 . Ch. 2: The bastides of Southwest France . ( http://dare.uva.nl/en/record/336940 )
  • Alain Lauret, Raymond Malebranche & Gilles Séraphin: Bastides, villes nouvelles du moyen-age. Milan, Toulouse 1988.
  • Charles Higounet: Bastide . In: Lexicon of the Middle Ages (LexMA). Volume 1, Artemis & Winkler, Munich / Zurich 1980, ISBN 3-7608-8901-8 , Sp. 1547 f.
  • Ernst Seidl (ed.): Lexicon of building types. Functions and forms of architecture . Philipp Reclam jun., Stuttgart 2006, ISBN 978-3-15-010572-6 .

Web links

Commons : Bastide  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Rolf Legler: Southwest France. DuMont art travel guide . DuMont Buchverlag , Cologne 1988, ISBN 3-7701-0986-4 , p. 219 ff.
  2. ↑ Gilles Bernard: Les bastides du Sud-Ouest. Diagram, Toulouse 1993 (French).