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Origin and history

The Labastide-Villefranche tower is a 14th-century medieval dungeon located east of the eponymous village in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques. Built in limestone and granite, it rises to 28 meters with a square base and mâchicoulis at the top. Its ground floor, blind, contrasts with the murderers of the first floor and the windows of the upper levels, added in the 15th or 16th centuries. The tower was initially a defence fortress against the kingdoms of Navarre and the English Guyenne, integrated into a system of ramparts now disappeared.

The bastide of Labastide-Villefranche was founded around 1292 by Marguerite de Foix, daughter of Gaston VII, in response to the English and Navarre bastides. An early tower was built from that time on, then transformed into a dungeon around 1338 by Gaston Fébus, who joined a castle connected by a drawbridge. This castle was destroyed in 1523 by the Spanish troops of Philibert de Chalon, general of Charles Quint, during the invasion of Béarn. Only the dungeon remained, partially damaged by lightning in 1853.

Ranked a historic monument in 1915, the tower preserves traces of its military use, such as the murderers, but also of subsequent civilian developments, such as a pediment added in 1922 on its southern wall. The remains of the adjacent castle, perhaps reused to build a Protestant temple under Louis XIII, have now disappeared. The tower remains an architectural testimony of the Franco-Navarra conflicts and medieval defensive urbanism in Béarn.

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