220. TOWN-HALL AND BELFRY AT YPRES (BELGIUM)
A third class borrow the names of French and occasionally of foreign provinces or towns. Anthyme St. Paul gives a list of such in the Annuaire de l'archéologie française,—Barcelone or Barcelonnette, Beauvais, Boulogne, Bruges, Cadix, Cordes (for Cordova), Fleurance (for Florence), Bretagne, Cologne, Valence, Miélan (for Milan), La Française and Francescas, Grenade, Libourne (for Leghorn), Modène, Pampelonne (for Pampeluna), etc.
A new town or bastide is usually rectangular in plan, and measures some 750 by 580 feet. Sauveterre d'Aveyron is an example. In the centre is a square, into which a street debouches on each side, thus dividing the town into four parts. The square is surrounded by galleries or cloisters, of round or pointed arches, covered with a timber roof or vault, with or without transverse arches, whence the term Place des Couverts, still common in some Southern towns.
In the centre of the square stood the town-hall, the ground-floor of which was used as a public market. Montréjeau is one of the towns in which this regularity of construction is observed, also Montpazier, the streets of which are lined with wide arcades of pointed arches. Other examples are to be found at Eymet, Domme, and Beaumont, Libourne, Ste. Foy, and Sauveterre de Guyenne, Damazan, and Montflanquin, Rabastens, Mirande, Grenade, Isle d'Albi, and Réalmont, etc. Several bastides in Guyenne were founded by the English. Finally, the lower town of Carcassonne, founded in 1247, and Aigues-Mortes, founded in 1248, also belong to the class of bastides or new towns.[72]
[72] See Part III., "Military Architecture."
"The series of Southern bastides, inaugurated in 1222 by the foundation of Cordes-Albigeois, was brought to a close in 1344 by a petition of the town-councillors of Toulouse, in answer to which the king forbade any further settlements. Two hundred at least of the bastides still exist in Guyenne, Gascony, Languedoc, and the neighbouring districts. Several of these were unprosperous, and are still small villages. In some cases their close proximity tended greatly to their mutual disadvantage."[73]
[73] Anthyme St. Paul, Histoire Monumentale de la France.
221. MARKET AND BELFRY AT BRUGES (BELGIUM)