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Origin and history

St. Peter's Church in Barbotan, located in Cazaubon, Gers, is a religious building dating back to the early 16th century, incorporating an old town gate. Built in a calcareous medium with high brick parts, it presents a sculpted Renaissance portal, inscribed in the Historical Monuments since 1925. Its architecture blends unique nave, vaults rebuilt after the Hundred Years' War, and a bell tower-pyramide added in 1899. The soil, made up of hot sludge, required stilts for its stability.

The western portal, a Renaissance masterpiece, is decorated with an arch in a cove of baskets decorated with finely worked mouldings and sculptures. Pilasters with diamond and rose motifs frame the whole, surmounted by a trilobed ornamented tympanum. This portal opens under the arch of the old town gate, testifying to the architectural integration between urban defense and place of worship.

The church was redesigned after the Hundred Years' War, with frames resting directly on the walls. Its history is linked to that of Barbotan's thermal baths, known since ancient times for their therapeutic virtues. In the 16th century, personalities like Montaigne or Henri IV frequented the places, attracted by bicarbonate waters and hot mud. The building thus embodies both a religious heritage and a gasconne thermal memory.

Barbotan's contemporary church gate was inscribed in 1926. Together, these elements form an emblematic site of Cazaubon, marked by its medieval and reborn past. The Gallo-Roman remains discovered in 1828 nearby confirm the old occupation of the site, linked to the thermal springs exploited since the ancient period.

In the 19th century Barbotan-les-Thermes experienced a golden age with the restoration of the installations by Clair-Joseph de Barbotan, revealing Roman traces. Despite a tragic fire in 1991, the station remains a place of rheumatic and phlebological care, while Saint-Pierre Church retains its role as architectural witness to this thermal and religious history.

The region, in Lower Armagnac, was a territory of passage and conflict, marked by the Iberian, Roman and then Franco invasions. The seigneury of Cazaubon, linked to the Counts of Armagnac, saw its church and castle suffer from the ravages of the Black Prince in 1355. Today, the building remains a symbol of local heritage, between medieval memory and thermal heritage.

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