New Castle

The majority of the current small towns of France were born with the Middle Ages, safe from a Castrum lately built (in opposition to the old Gallo-Roman cities). One finds of it the trace in the name of the places.

To be success, the urban center thus created must occupy a site favorable to the economic activities: bottom of an estuary, the presence of a ford or a bridge, the contact of the plain and forest.

With the passing of years, the newcomers do not settle any more in the old city nor, a fortiori , in the castle. They build their houses, which are at the same time their workshop and their shop, with the foot of the wall, close to the doors. It is what one calls the borough, or Faubourg, often equipped by the lord with a particular status. It develops around a place where the market is held, since the trade and the craft industry are the reasons to be new community.

When the inhabitants are rather numerous and as soon as their richness allows them, those obtain from the lord the right to raise a palisade then a genuine wall. The primitive enclosure is then demolished and the old city is melted then in the news. Urban rise is thus marked by a series of concentric enclosures that the layout of the streets or boulevards reflects still nowadays.

Other modes of establishment

Beside new the castrum coexist with the Middle Ages of another types of cities where to be established:

Gallo-Roman old cities sheltered behind their walls, up to that point populated clerks with the service of the bishop or peasants who were going to work each day out of the walls

the rich person Abbaye S also present an alternative, the craftsmen find their customers among the pilgrims which have a presentiment of themselves there.

South-west also sees the establishment of country houses, villages strengthened around a church and of a place organized in arcades and feudal mounds, locally called Tuc.

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