What is a bastide?

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A bastide is the result of a voluntary and rapid creation in the 13th and 14th centuries ordered by an administrative authority (king, count,) or sometimes religious (bishop) in places freed from defensive constraints after the crusade against the Albigensians.

These foundations allow the adoption of a reasoned, planned town planning. "Bastir et poblar": to build and populate, was the deep project

of the founders.

These founders are either the kings of England in the Duchy of Aquitaine, a legacy of Aliénor, or great lords, the most outstanding of whom is Alphonse de Poitiers, brother of Louis IX and Count of Toulouse. They are French or English but with no fundamental difference between them.

Bastides were founded to attract, in a space that is generally sparsely populated but rarely empty, activities that were to make these places demographic and economic poles of attraction.

They made it possible to assert royal authority (French or English) at the expense of the lords. If the need arose, especially in the early stages of the Hundred Years War, they could be transformed into fortresses with the construction of walls and gates. But this is not the case for all bastides.