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Origin and history

The Tower of the City Hall of Belvès is the only vestige of a convent of the Preachers Brothers (Dominican or Jacobins), founded in 1324 in Belvès, Dordogne. This convent, built outside the walls of the fortified city, was built thanks to the donations of the local nobles and the inhabitants, under the impulse of Raymond d'Apremont de Roquecorne, then bishop of Sarlat (1318-1324). Together with schools for the theological and intellectual formation of the monks, the convent became a study centre, although its school was considered poor by the standards of order. The buildings suffered heavy damage during the Hundred Years' War, notably after the British troops captured Belvès in 1345.

During the Wars of Religion, the convent was repeatedly looted and burned, notably in 1569 by Geoffroy de Vivans, who destroyed a large part of the place and stole valuable goods, including books and silverware. The buildings were rebuilt in the seventeenth century, but the schools, reopened after the conflicts, closed definitively in 1790, with the Revolution. After the monks left, the commune acquired the premises: the church, abandoned, collapsed in 1802, while the remaining buildings were reused for various purposes (prison, school, gendarmerie) before sheltering the current town hall.

The bell tower, the only intact element of the 14th century, was listed as a Historic Monument in 1910. Its square structure, evolving in octagon by glaci at 45°, is characteristic of the religious architecture of the Agenese, although rare in Périgord. Today, it dominates the Place de la Liberté in Belvès, recalling the turbulent history of this Dominican convent, once the intellectual and spiritual heart of the region.

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