Poncin

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Poncin
Poncin coat of arms
Poncin (France)
Poncin
region Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes
Department Ain
Arrondissement Nantua
Canton Pont d'Ain
Community association Rives de l'Ain-Pays du Cerdon
Coordinates 46 ° 5 '  N , 5 ° 24'  E Coordinates: 46 ° 5 '  N , 5 ° 24'  E
height 240-540 m
surface 19.77 km 2
Residents 1,703 (January 1, 2017)
Population density 86 inhabitants / km 2
Post Code 01450
INSEE code
Website www.poncin.fr

Poncin Castle

Poncin is a French commune with 1,703 inhabitants (at January 1, 2017) in the department of Ain in the region Auvergne Rhône-Alpes . It belongs to the canton of Pont-d'Ain and the Arrondissement of Nantua .

geography

Poncin is located at 263  m in the southern French Jura Mountains , about 19 kilometers southeast of the prefecture of Bourg-en-Bresse and 57 kilometers northeast of the city of Lyon (as the crow flies). The area of ​​the 19.77 km 2 municipality covers a section of the Ain valley in the Bugey . The place is on the left bank of the Ain at the point where the Veyron brook from the Cerdon gorge flows into the Ain. The highest point is the mountain Les Roches above the hamlet of La Cueille .

In addition to the town of Poncin, there are the following hamlets in the municipality (from north to south):

  • Allement ( 286  m ) upstream on the right bank of the Ain
  • La Cueille ( 310  m ) exactly opposite Allement on a hill on the left bank of the Ain
  • Champeillon ( 262  m ) on the road from Poncin to La Cueille
  • Avrillat ( 357  m ) in the foothills of the Saint-Alban plateau
  • Leymiat ( 278  m ) on a plain at the entrance to the Cerdon gorge
  • Ménestruel ( 299  m ) south of the Eben between Poncin and Leymiat
  • Breignes ( 375  m ) on the foothills of the Mérignat plateau .

Neighboring municipalities of Poncin are Bohas-Meyriat-Rignat , Hautecourt-Romanèche , Serrières-sur-Ain and Challes-la-Montagne in the north, Saint-Alban, Cerdon and Mérignat in the east, Jujurieux in the south and Neuville-sur-Ain in the west.

history

The area of ​​Poncin has been continuously inhabited at least since the Bronze Age , which has been proven by systematic excavations of the soil layers in the Abri Gay cave . Bronze needles and axes were also found in other places on the parish grounds. The foundations of several villas from the Gallo-Roman period were uncovered.

Already at the beginning of the 6th century there was a parish in Poncin, which was mentioned in medieval documents as Poncins and Pontianum . The municipality belonged to the Coligny family in the 12th century and passed to the Lords of Thoire-Villars in 1185, who built a castle there. The counts of Savoy took over after the death of the last Thoire-Villars finally sovereignty over Poncin. With the Treaty of Lyon , the entire Bugey came to France in 1601.

Attractions

The current castle of Poncin is a building from the 19th century, but stands within the defensive walls that the Thoire-Villars built as part of their castle in the Middle Ages. This castle was demolished in 1601 and replaced by a castle in the 18th century, which was badly damaged during the French Revolution . Parts of the fortification walls as well as the terraces and gardens are registered as monument historique . Upstream in the Ain Valley at the head of the hamlet of La Cueille is the Château de la Cueille . The building was erected in the 13th century by the Lords of Coligny and redesigned in the 16th and 19th centuries.

The box girder bridge on the A40 motorway, completed in 1986, is a modern structure a few hundred meters north of the old town center . It leads with a main span of 155 m over the river Ain.

population

Population development
year Residents
1962 1,157
1968 1,210
1975 1,115
1982 1,144
1990 1,229
1999 1,360
2006 1,550
2011 1,665

With 1703 inhabitants (as of January 1, 2017) Poncin is one of the smaller communities in the Ain department. After the population had decreased somewhat in the first half of the 20th century (in 1901 there were still 1675 people counted), it has increased again slightly since the 1990s. The local residents of Poncin are called Poncinois (es) in French .

Economy and Infrastructure

Poncin was an agricultural village well into the 20th century . Today there are both a large number of small businesses and an industrial company with a few hundred employees, the manufacturer of marking machines and special printing machines Tiflex . A large part of the working population are also commuters who work in the larger localities in the area. Viticulture is still practiced on the communal soil, on the slopes near the hamlets of Breignes and Leymiat. Above all, the varieties Poulsard and Gamay, which are required for the protected designation of origin Cerdon , are grown. Of the 28 farms (as of 2010) in the municipality, around half are winemakers .

The department road D1084 crosses the village. It connects Nantua with Pont-d'Ain and is also part of the highway connection between Lyon and western Switzerland. The D91, which begins in Poncin, follows the course of the Ain over 30 kilometers to Matafelon-Granges . The A40 motorway also runs through the municipality, but has no junctions there. A slip road to the A42 is about 9 kilometers away in Pont-d'Ain.

In Poncin there is a pre-school ( école maternelle ), two state primary schools ( école élémentaire , one of which has an integrated pre-school) and a comprehensive school ( collège ).

Personalities

Web links

Commons : Poncin  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ André Buisson: Carte Archéologique de la Gaule - Ain 01 . Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres , 1990, ISBN 2-87754-010-3 , pp. 122 (French, limited preview in Google Book search).
  2. É. Philipon: Dictionnaire Topographique du Département de l'Ain . Imprimerie Nationale, 1911, p. 320 (French, online [PDF; accessed January 4, 2014]).
  3. Le château de Poncin in the Base Mérimée of the French Ministry of Culture (French).
  4. Château de la Cueille. In: www.chateau-fort-manoir-chateau.eu. Retrieved February 11, 2014 (French).
  5. Poncin. In: Structurae
  6. French Statistics Institute ( www.insee.fr )
  7. Poncin - notice communale. In: cassini.ehess.fr. Retrieved December 15, 2014 (French, INSEE population from 1968 ).