Valbonne

Valbonne is a common French, located in the department of the the Alpes-Maritimes and the area Provence-Alp-Coast of Azure.

Its inhabitants is the Valbonnais .

Most of the territory of the commune is occupied by the Technopole of Sophia Antipolis. One speaks then about “Valbonne Sophia Antipolis”.

Geography

Valbonne occupies the average basin of the Brague, river coastal of 15 km which takes its source at the bottom of the small valley of Opio. The commune is articulated around two poles:

the historical village located in the extreme North-West of the territory,
Sophia Antipolis in the east, around the agglomerations of Haut-Sartoux and Garbejaïre.

History

With the Early middle ages, some hamlets of the surroundings: Opio, Brusc, Sartoux (Castellaras), Clausonnes and Villebruc, were already inhabited, but it is on the grounds of a small valley isolated and deserted from the territory of Sartoux which will become “Vallisbona” (the good valley), offered in 1199 by the bishop of Antibes to the abbey of Prads (Prads-High-Bléone, Alp-of-High-Provence), which was founded the abbey Sainte-Marie de Valbonne. Prads and Valbonne belonged to the fifteen abbeys and priories of the Monastic order of Chalais, order “from the Dauphine-of Provence” created one century earlier according to a rule close to that of the Cistercien S. the poverty of this mountain kind generated its disintegration and, in 1297, the abbot of Valbonne links purely and simply his abbey with the monastery of Saint-Andrew of Avignon; the bishop and the chapter of Fatty refused to ratify this affiliation and offered in 1303 Sainte-Marie de Valbonne to the Abbaye of Lérins. The pope sliced this litigation in 1346: he allotted Sainte-Marie de Valbonne to Lérins.

At the end of the Middle Ages, the tests rain on Provence: Black Death, dryness, devastations and competitions, incursions cruel which decimate and make flee the rare populations of the surrounding hamlets, leaving the territories of the abbey “ruined, uninhabited, uncultivated, stony and wood covers”.

The meeting of Provence in France by Louis XI, was the prelude to the rebirth of the area. By the will of the monk of Lérins prior of Valbonne, gift Antoine Taxil, the village will be born in 1519 from an economic obviousness: to emphasize the grounds of the abbey. Compartmental orthogonal is made up and an original solution is found: investors local, clerks and notable, assignees of the batches, will rent them with the grounds which are attached there to peasants, come mainly from the High-Country to cultivate the real estate, charges with them with building the houses. An act of dwelling describes the architectural rights and duties of the new inhabitants but also details, according to a " book of the charges" rigorous. Construction will be carried out over one century. The village will relatively remain rural and insulated, almost without change, until the middle of the 20th century.

The proximity of the littoral and especially, in the years 1970, the creation of the pole university, scientific, technological and residential of Sophia Antipolis, built mainly on the forest of Valbonne, transformed the area.

Bibliography: History of Valbonne Sophia Antipolis ISBN 2-7449-0388-4, EDISUD, January 2003.

Administration

|- | align=right| 1790 || Mr. Antoine Périssol || || Mayor |- | align=right| 1791 || Mr. Honore Courmes || || Mayor |- | align=right| 1791 || Mr. Joseph Bowses || || Mayor |- | align=right| 1792 || Mr. Jean-Paul Bermond || || Mayor |- | align=right| 1796 || Mr. Honore Courmes || || Mayor |- | align=right| 1797 || Mr. Jacques Feraud || || Mayor |- | align=right| 1798 || Mr. Jean Bareste || || Mayor |- | align=right| 1800 || Mr. Jean-Pierre Bowses || || Mayor |- | align=right| 1802 || Mr. Jean Bareste || || Mayor |- | align=right| 1813 || Mr. Joseph Bowses || || Mayor |- | align=right| 1816 || Mr. Jean Bareste || || Mayor |- | align=right| 1830 || Mr. Joseph Bowses || || Mayor |- | align=right| 1840 || Mr. Blaise Foucard || || Mayor |- | align=right| 1851 || Mr. Ferdinand Ardisson || || Mayor |- | align=right| 1865 || Mr. Honore Autran || || Mayor |- | align=right| 1870 || Mr. Eugene Giraud || || Mayor |- | align=right| 1884 || Mr. Benoît Layet || || Mayor |- | align=right| 1888 || Mr. Theophilus Consolat || || Mayor |- | align=right| 1892 || Mr. Joseph Castou || || Mayor |- | align=right| 1894 || Mr. Antoine-Joseph Périssol || || Mayor |- | align=right| 1900 || Mr. Joseph Bermond || || Mayor |- | align=right| 1936 || Mr. Maurice Borie || || Mayor |- | align=right| 1941 || Mr. Louis Morin || || President of the special delegation |- | align=right| 1944 || Mr. Jean Bowses || || President of the special delegation |- | align=right| 1944 || Mr. Joseph Pagano || || President of the Committee of Release |- | align=right| 1945 || Mr. Emile Pourcel || || Mayor |- | align=right| 1959 || Mr. Jean Riquier || || Mayor |- | align=right| 1971 || Mr. Albert Ouvrier || || Mayor |- | align=right| 1983 || Mr. Gustave Giraud || || Mayor |- | align=right| 1989 || Mr. Michel Rolant || PS || Mayor |- | align=right| 1996 || Mr. Marc Daunis || PS || Mayor |- | align=right| March 2001 || Mr. Marc Daunis || PS || Mayor |}

Demography

Places and monuments

The old village

On an Orthogonal level, around the place of the Arcades, built at the beginning of the 17th century, five streets go down from north to the south, ten streets of is in west, broad of two ducks (approximately four meters), crossing with right angles, forming a checkerboard plan which gives seen sky, an image characteristic of Valbonne. The same rigor finds in the plan of the high and narrow houses, at the origin all identical: a ground floor was used as handing-over which nowadays is found in half basement, because of the rise in the level in the street; with the first stages the “room”, part with living; with the top rooms, and finally the attic where the reserves hoisted using a pulley were stored, of which some are still seen. In the main street is the old town hall with its tower and its fountain built at the 19th century.

The abbey church

The abbey church Romance of the 13th century become parish church with the construction of the village, is the perfect example of art chalaisien, very near to the primitive art cistercian. The bell-tower was added to the 19th century. Several vaults and oratories, at the village and in the countryside, supplement the religious architecture.

The conventual buildings , preserved well, whose restoration started into 1970 continues, accommodate the museum of the inheritance “the Valbonne Old man” which presents many objects, ustensils and tools representative of the rural life of the village and revives, through presentations and of works, the history of the village and the monastic order of Chalais.

Personalities related to the commune

See too

Sophia Antipolis

Common of the Alpes-Maritimes

External bonds

Official site of the town of Valbonne Sophia Antipolis
Tourist office of Valbonne Sophia Antipolis
association Abbyvalb, the friends of the abbey and the inheritance valbonnais
Valbonne on the site of the national geographical Institute
Valbonne on the site of INSEE
Valbonne on the site of Quid
Localization of Valbonne on a chart of France and communes bordering
Plan on Valbonne on Mapquest
the site of local councils FCPE (Federation of the parental advices of pupils of the public schools) with Valbonne
virtual Visite of Valbonne

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