Bergerac and its essentials: the Top 8!
Bergerac and its essentials: the Top 8!
Bergerac
Family Time
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English
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Bergerac finds its origin in the existence of a castle, built at the end of the 11th century on the banks of the Dordogne, which attracts a population hitherto dispersed in the plain.
The castral town grew to become a stage for travellers, pilgrims and merchants, a century later. The construction of the St Jacques church and a hospital confirms this extension. In the 13th century, the development of viticulture and the growth of trade led to the construction of a bridge over the Dordogne. Engaged in the municipal movement, the city acquires freedoms and franknesses, conditions of its fortune, since it can from now on export its wines. The agglomeration extends and overflows by suburbs where settle convents of mendicant order. The cereal lands arrive at the gates of the city while the vine dominates on the hillsides from this time.
In the middle of the 14th century, the city was surprised by the Hundred Years War but managed to preserve itself, as a free and independent city, through its diplomatic strategy. However, it loses half of its “fiscal” population.
After a demographic recovery, the municipal power restructures urban life and regulates public hygiene. With the Peace, commercial prosperity returned, but the population fell in love with Calvinist ideas. The peaceful merchant city then became a powerful Protestant stronghold where convents and churches were destroyed.
Despite the Wars of Religion, the population of Bergerac in the 16th century led a peaceful and prosperous existence sheltered from its defences. The arrival of the printing press created an important activity in Bergerac, then qualified as “Little Geneva”. The new opulence is expressed in beautiful architectural programmes, including the Hôtel Peyrarède built in 1604. This brilliant period of independence ended with the reconquest of the towns by Louis XIII. Opening their doors to the royal armies, the people of Bergerac organize a solemn entry for the sovereign. This one makes dismantle the fortifications and build a citadel in the East of the city. He set up an infantry regiment, set up a devoted municipality and left behind a mission of Récollet fathers. Reformed and Catholics coexist somehow until the new persecutions and "dragonnades". At the end of the 17th century, the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, under the reign of Louis XIV, emptied Bergerac of its lifeblood. Very often, these elites will find refuge in England or Holland; they will strengthen the commercial links already in place with the Bergerac vineyard.
In the 18th century, under Louis XV, the living conditions of the people of Bergerac improved. Manufactures and earthenware developed. Three earthenware factories, installed in the Faubourg de la Madeleine, produce articles sent to America.
Bergerac maintains its role as a large regional market, but it does not succeed in regaining its past dynamism. The wine trade, which was still profitable, no longer benefited all layers of society but mainly benefited the bourgeoisie and the coopers, who numbered 74 in 1724.
However, in the 19th century, the local port activity allowed a new boom. 150,000 tons of goods are transported each year and 1,500 boat movements keep the port alive. The city develops in the North. But the arrival of the railway gradually led to the decline and abandonment of trade on barges and the impoverishment of the historic district.
Phylloxera also marks a turning point in the local economy. This vine disease which, coming from America, decimated the Bergerac vineyards in 1880, forced winegrowers to replant on better plots. The grafting of a French vine stock on American roots resistant to the parasite, makes it possible to restart the viticultural activity.
In the 20th century, the creation of an explosives and powder factory in 1915, known as the “Poudrerie” transformed the town's landscape and doubled its population. Tobacco cultivation also brought a major economic revival from the beginning of the century. In 1927, the city saw the opening of the Experimental Institute of Tobacco. The post-war years were prosperous and Bergerac became the tobacco capital of France.
The second war breaks out. The locally organized Resistance worked effectively to transport the crews of downed English and American planes to Spain. It receives numerous parachute drops and ensures the transmission of information to the Allied forces.
Two bombardments of the airfield of Roumanière, on March 5, 1944 by the Americans, and on March 18 by the English will cause significant damage. Several buildings were then destroyed. A monument dedicated to resistance fighters and victims of deportation has been erected in their memory, in the heart of the city: Place Gambetta.
Bergerac is today an active city, in perpetual development. Tourism and viticulture are now two major poles of its economy.
On the barges, visitors have replaced the wine, the city now lives to the rhythm of the seasons, enhancing its permanent commercial dynamics with a whole range of summer events.
In the sky, a regular ballet of jumbo jets bears witness to the explosion in traffic that Bergerac Dordogne Périgord airport has experienced since 2003. Since the opening of the "Roumanières" aerodrome in 1934, it's been quite an evolution: the airlines today connect Bergerac to many British cities (London, Edinburgh, Bristol, Liverpool, Nottingham, Birmingham, Exeter, Southampton,) and northern Europe (Brussels-Charleroi and Rotterdam) without forgetting Paris. The historic link with Northern Europe is thus extended in an unexpected way.
The current city offers a clever mix made up of countless testimonies of the past and of modernity. A modernity which is expressed through companies at the forefront of their technology as well as in the numerous shows and exhibitions that mark each year. A vivid past through the architecture of the houses and alleys of the old town that you will have the pleasure of discovering by yourself or accompanied by a guide from the Tourist Office.
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Bergerac finds its origin in the existence of a castle, built at the end of the 11th century on the banks of the Dordogne, which attracts a population hitherto dispersed in the plain.
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