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Origin and history

The tower of Hautefage-la-Tour, located in the Lot-et-Garonne department in Nouvelle-Aquitaine, is an atypical hexagonal building built at the hinge of the 15th and 16th centuries. Unlike the defensive towers, it was designed as a residence for the bishops of Agen, notably Leonardo Grosso della Rovere (1487–1519) and his successor Antonio della Rovere (1519–1538), whose coat of arms adorn the building. Its picturesque location, at the confluence of two hills overlooking a valley, and its absence of military devices (murder, waiting stones) confirm its residential and symbolic vocation, perhaps unfinished or partially destroyed.

As early as the 17th century, the tower was reassigned as a bell tower for the nearby church of Notre-Dame, as Bishop Claude Joly noted in 1668, which described it as "imperfect" but housing two bells. In the 19th century, it was semi-ruined, with missing interior divisions and a collapsed upper part. Georges Tholin, in the Revue de l'Agenais (1889), made a sorry state before the restorations undertaken from 1888. This work gave it its present appearance: balustrade, buttress with pinnacles, and conical cover in slate added around 1910. Ranked a historic monument in 1883, it was even transformed into a water castle in 1957 (reservoir abandoned in 1974).

The tower is distinguished by its hexagonal plane, its tower of staircase with external screws (122 steps), and its windows with various styles: Renaissance on the first floor (meneaux, pediments), threaded on the second, and wide bays on the third floor. Recent restorations (2007–2013) have allowed the tank to be dismantled, a floor restored, and the bells replaced. Despite these interventions, the interior floors still need to be redeveloped. The building thus illustrates the functional changes of a medieval heritage, between episcopal fascist, parish utility, and modern preservation.

The sources underline its hybrid character: architectural fantasy of Italian bishops, improvised bell tower, and local symbol. The traces of projectiles evoked by Monumentum suggest past destructions, while oral tradition insists on its incompleteness. Today it is a communal property and still dominates the village, witness to the Renaissance ambitions and the successive adaptations of a monument to the turbulent history.

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