When you arrive in Domme from the village of Vitrac, the imposing Porte des Tours rises in front of you. These two half-turns surrounding the entrance have had a rich historical past. They served as guard rooms but also as a prison for 70 Templars who were detained there from 1307 to 1318. If the famous Templar treasure is yet to be discovered, the soldier monks left another treasure in Domme that you will love! During their incarceration and until their death, their faith led them to engrave on the walls of their jail, striking enigmatic testimonies. Still visible today, these graffiti make Domme a unique site. The bastide was founded in 128113 by Philippe le Hardi on a plateau to the west of which a castle already existed, then in the hands of the Gourdon family. Domme has two places where commerce was practiced: Place de la Halle and Place de la Rode. The commercial city organized fairs and obtained the privilege of minting its own currency. It was long considered that in 1307 the city became, during the arrest of the Templars, a place where seventy of them were imprisoned. They came, it was said, from the dioceses from Périgueux, Cahors, Rodez, Bourges, Limoges, Clermont, Angoulême and Poitiers; and they would have left as evidence of their passage the hundred or so graffiti found at the Porte des Tours. It has been said on this subject and without proof that the Templars used a geometric code: the octagon for the Grail, the triangle surmounted by a cross for Golgotha, the square for the Temple. The circles, themselves, would have symbolized confinement. It has also been said that engravings with a fairly similar symbolism were found in Loches, Gisors and Chinon, which is purely imaginary. Their authenticity for these three sites is disputed by specialists. In reality, the identification of Domme's graffiti and their alleged historical justification were based on false surveys, imagined by a forger who is now well identified, and methods of interpreting very fanciful images and documents without any scientific basis14, 15.
Later, during the Hundred Years War16, the bastide became a place coveted by the English. The first capture of the city by the latter dates from 134717. On several occasions, it successively changes hands between the two rival camps until 1437, date of its return to the French domain.
New tribulations await this site during the Wars of Religion. The bastide was taken in 1588 by Geoffroy de Vivans, Protestant captain of the Castelnaud garrison who climbed the cliff with his men at night to open the doors to the main body of his troops. However, the success of the Catholic troops was such that he had to cede the bastide in which he had entrenched himself in 1592.
The calm hardly returned, the bastide had to face a jacquerie des croquants in 1594 and later in 1637. Domme experienced prosperity in the 17th century and then declined, which has facilitated its conservation until today.
Source : Wikipedia.
Photo : www.domme.fr
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