Fort Saint-André (Villeneuve-lès-Avignon)

The treaty of Paris, signed in 1229 at the end of the Albigensian Crusade, handed the French crown the land west of the Rhône from Pont-Saint-Esprit to the Mediterranean, together with a joint interest in the city of Avignon. In 1290 the Avignon claim changed hands between Philip IV, Philippe le Bel, and Charles II of Naples, Count of Provence through his marriage to Beatrice of Provence; the arrangement is set down as a cession of the king's claim by some accounts and as an exchange of Maine and Anjou for a share of the lordship in Avignon by others. What is not in doubt is where the border then lay: the frontier of the kingdom ran along the Rhône, and Philip decided to build Villeneuve-lès-Avignon to hold a strategic point on it.

The Benedictine abbey of Saint-André already stood on Mount Andaon, a rocky outcrop rising some 50 m above the floodplain in full view of Avignon on the far bank; until the 1770s the river ran against the foot of the eastern slope. Founded at the end of the 10th century, the abbey held over 200 churches spread across southern France. It occupied the eastern end of the summit plateau, while a small village, the bourg Saint-André, took the western end. In 1290 Philip IV instructed Adam de Montcéliard, sénéchal of Beaucaire, to negotiate an agreement with the abbey for joint defence of the right bank. The paréage treaty signed in 1292 allowed the king to build a fortress with a permanent garrison beside the abbey and a castle down by the river; the abbey surrendered its temporal power and gained protection from Avignon, which wanted control of both banks.

Fortifications went up in the first decade of the 14th century at the western end of the Pont Saint-Bénézet, less than a kilometre from the abbey, among them an early Tour Philippe-le-Bel. In 1309 Pope Clement V moved the papacy from Rome to Avignon, and the ground across the water from Mount Andaon became the seat of the popes.

The fortress and the curtain wall enclosing the abbey were raised in several stages during the 14th century. The surviving manuscripts do not allow the work to be dated precisely, and it is placed in the first half of the century by some accounts and in the second half by others. The fortifying of Mount Andaon itself is credited to the reign of John II the Good, with the last architect Jean de Loubières, called Jean de Louvres, who also built the papal palace at Avignon, finishing the work on the order of Charles V. Documents name a châtelain at the fort in 1314 and again in 1344, and a guard in 1318. The carved crest set above the entrance by the abbey carries the date 20 July 1367, probably marking a modification of the entrance arch.

The fortress was plainly visible from the papal town across the Rhône, and was meant to be: it was built to assert the power of the Kingdom of France against the popes at Avignon and the lands of the Empire. Its walled circuit runs 750 m, entered through a gatehouse set between twin towers and nicknamed the château royal.

That gatehouse held the working quarters of the châtelain and the viguier; the viguier's room, to the right of the entrance, bears the royal arms on a keystone, and the chamber above the gate held the winches that worked the two portcullises. At the highest point of the wall the Tour des Masques, the tower of the witches from the Occitan mascas, holds a single very tall room covered in the graffiti of soldiers and prisoners. Inside the circuit stood the abbey the fort had been built to shelter, and a 12th-century chapel, the chapelle de Belvézet. Officers of the crown occupied the fortress without a break, and a garrison held it, until the French Revolution.

Fort Saint-André was classified as a monument historique by decrees of 25 April 1903 and 14 November 1925, and the enceinte in its entirety, with all its defensive works, was classified by an order of 22 January 1906. A run of further decrees and orders between 1926 and 1939 extended protection to the parcels of ground around the fort, and an order of 19 December 1947 covered the parcels inside the walls, the former abbey of Saint-André among them. The site is regularly open to the public for a fee, though it takes a fraction of the visitors who go to the Palais des Papes across the river.