Medieval (500–1500)

Monpazier

1284 · France · Western & Central Europe · Military, colonial, and ideal-city planning · Planned by Edward I of England (as Duke of Aquitaine)
Viollet-le-Duc's plan of the bastide of Monpazier, showing the orthogonal grid of streets and the central market square of Edward I's 1284 new town.
Viollet-le-Duc's plan of the bastide of Monpazier, showing the orthogonal grid of streets and the central market square of Edward I's 1284 new town. · public-domain · Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, Dictionnaire raisonné de l'architecture française (1856), via Wikimedia Commons

Core idea

Textbook bastide — a regular grid of streets around a central arcaded market square (place des cornières), with uniform burgage plots and a fortified church

Why it matters

The most studied bastide plan; the clearest surviving diagram of medieval rational town-founding for settlement, trade, and territorial control

Description

Monpazier was founded in 1284 by Edward I of England, acting as Duke of Aquitaine, as a bastide in the Dordogne. The plan is a compact regular grid of streets around a central market square framed by continuous arcades, the place des cornières, with uniform burgage plots, back lanes and a fortified church set just off the square. It was one of hundreds of such new towns planted across Gascony to settle territory, foster trade and secure contested borderlands.

Significance

Monpazier is the textbook bastide, the most studied and best preserved diagram of medieval rational town-founding. It demonstrates that grid planning, standardised plots and market-centred design were systematic tools of thirteenth-century territorial policy, and it remains a standard reference in histories of the planted town and of colonial grid planning more broadly.

What shaped it

Plans it influenced

Sources

Open it on the interactive timeline →
hub.toekom.st — History of Urbanism · an interactive timeline of 850 planned cities across 6,000 years.