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 Medieval New Towns
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Hill-perched Tournon-d'Agenais
( :A.G.-CG47) |
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Sometimes their buildings are all old. Yet as towns they are relatively new, dating usually from the thirteenth century. They were built all of a piece. They are early examples of town-planning, on simple lines followed by that later instance of a primitively-planned city, New York.
The plan is a grid, of straight streets crossing each other at right angles. The rim of the chequer is formed of walls, sometimes doubled, and pierced at the ends and the sides with towered gates. The middle of the grid is left open as a market-place, and surrounded by merchants' houses of which the bottom stories form arcading round the square.
This admirable device affords shelter from the rain in winter, and shade from the sun in summer. The bastides were strong places garrisoned by their people, not by a lord, they did not have a castle; instead, the church was also a fortress. Some of the bastides are no larger today than they were when they were built. Their situation was chosen for strategic, not for economic reasons, and they might be set on a cliff or on a barren causse. Others had better luck in placing; and when the long insecurity of the Middle Ages was over, they burst out of their walls, as did Villeneuve-sur-Lot. Panorama 360° |
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