Belvès, medieval town with seven belltowers, is near the Bessède forest. Its name probably comes from a celtic tribe, the Bellovaques, that settled here around 250 B.C. (The town of Beauvais has the same origin). Through small streets with poetic names as la Rue du Bout du Monde ("End Of The World Street") or la Rue de l’Oiseau qui Chante ("The Bird That Sings Street"), the Castrum fortified in the 11th century, with its main gate, its belfry and its ramparts. The Covered Market, 500 years old, has kept on one of its 23 pillars, the chain of the pillory where thieves and other bad citizens were attached. In the streets with gothic and Renaissance style houses are the remains of the Dominican Convent and its octogonal belltower, the hôtel Bontemps (XII-XVIth), the Hôpital (XVIIth), the castle (XIVth) or the Tour de l’Auditeur (XIth). Under the market place, the Cave dwellings show us how daily life was in the Middle Ages inside the ancient moat. The countryside is full of small castles, old stone houses, mysterious cluzeaux and examples of rural architecture such as pigeon-houses, stone huts and wash houses.   Dolmens, and very beautiful flintstone polishers are witnesses of human settlement during the prehistoric and neolithic ages.

These dwellings consist of a whole of caves aligned on both sides of the old medieval ditch of defense of «Castrum », i.e. the strengthened city of XIth century (Belvès having been founded by the Bellovaques Celts in 250 BC). It is at the tertiary period that a river dug its bed with the site of this ditch, like these caves. Those were colonized during prehistory, the Neolithic era, then in the Middle Age.

At that time, one knows by the "Terrier" of Belvès (consulting of the landowners, the equivalent of our cadastral registers) that people lived "infra muros and sauti castri", i.e. «under the ramparts », and in «the jump of the castrum »in other words in the ditch of defense. It is also mentioned a man called Delbalat living there into 1462 («balat »coming from «valat »which means ditch in occitan, Delbalat = «From the ditch »). The Castrum de Belvès, or strengthened city, was located at the intersection of several Roman ways, used then by the Visigoths whose capital was Toulouse; its site on a rocky outcrop closed by this natural ditch was ideal to build a fortified town.
At the time of the Franco-English competition, the inhabitants of these shelters were dislodged in order to respect the military function of the ditch necessary to the defense of Castrum. This period extends from 1242, date of the first catch of Belvès by the English, to 1442 end of the one hundred years war for the city. For the same reasons another interruption has to occur during the very bloody wars of religion at the end of XVIth century.
In the following centuries, notarial acts give a report on the donation into 1662 of one of these cellars, of death of an old lady of 80 years and birth in 1722 of an illegitimate girl, baptized the day it its birth.
In 1764, the ditches were not justified any more like means of defense; they were filled for a better adjustment of the place. The troglodytic dwellings did not have any more of output to the free air, nor of occupants. They were forgotten by the population.

In 1907, a cart made break down towards the northern end the ceiling of a cellar, making it possible to rediscover these hidden dwellings. People broke some separations and traversed the filled up parts of fill. At the same time, they were invited to fill this breach on the place by household refuse and ground.
It thus had to be waited until 1989 so that work of removal of obstructions, excavations and installation makes it possible to the public to visit these places of life of the past.

Each part constituted a dwelling with whole share, with a gate of access on the ditch now filled, a chimney, sometimes a window, a sink or some wall cupboards. Each dwelling was thus independent. The gates were closed with a wood piece which was embedded in a hole and a notch with "comma". It should be noted that the men of the Middle Ages enlerged the natural cavities in order to increase the space of their dark home (many traces of blows of peaks on the walls). A family is composed of 4 to 7 people: the father, the mother, 4 or 5 children of which the half dies before 15 years old, which makes to a life expectancy of approximately 25 years... sometimes a brother or an unmarried sister, very rarely a grandparent. It is also necessary to add some domestic animals, donkey, pig, goat, hens... one finds the rings of fastener in the walls. Therefore it is hard to imagine accumulation, the promiscuity of the members of a large family, with his animals, in these wet and badly ventilated tiny rooms which sometimes do not exceed 20m². In order to save place, one drives wood bars in the walls of limestone to have the racks or to suspend some ustensils, tools or linen; if the height of the ceiling allows it, of the putlog-holes, badly squared beams laid out in apertures (holes in the rock), can form an additional level for the bed for example. An adjustment of this type, rather original, is in part N°5: a series of apertures for putlog-holes which more or less support mezzanines pressed themselves on beams (of «the palforcas »). These mezzanines supported berths with straw mattresses, on which slept head-digs the most people possible. One reached it by a scale.
The medieval lithographies teach us that the furniture of the poor people is very summary: a linen chest, a table posed on trestles when it is used (one «put »or «set » the table with the literal meaning), some banks or stools, a tripod, a pot, an oil lamp, tallow or wax torches, crockery out of wooden, knives, no forks, rare spoons out of wooden or bone. The many shards found dating from the XIIIth to the XVIIIth century attest use of potteries like pots, mortar with grain, to preserve wine and water, the salted pig, oil... the pottery is not expensive, and Belvès was a high place of pottery industry. The kinf of potter's wheel reconstituted in room N°2 was still in use recently ; more generally it is significant to understand that the technics and the ways of life evolved only very slowly until the beginning of our century and many similarities can be between these two times, especially in the lost countries.
Remains of fireplace are found in the medium of the rooms N°3 and 8, with a hook above which lets suppose that in addition to the chimney another fire could heat «a toupine ». The mural chimneys developed besides only as from the XIV th century; previously and still after fire was in the center of the room, which lets guess the unbreathable atmosphere of the places, even if that were killing vermins. This kind of hook could be also used to suspend an animal to be cut up, a ham, an oil lamp or a cradle.
The population living here paid a rent and was composed in major part of farmer-wine growers. The vine was very present until the XIXth century end before the terrible epidemic of phylloxera; all the area exploited vineyards as it is attested in the map of Belleyme (XVIIIth), and this «wine of Domme » was exported via the barges to Bordeaux to leave towards England, Holland. In the troglodytic shelters were found a bill hook for vine grower and parts of metal from plough used to work the vine; a reconstitution is in room N°3. There could be also craftsmen, cobblers, potters...
The found bones show that they ate ox, sheep, half-wild pig; they also cultivated a garden in the content of the ditch (many leguminous plant pollens found), collected nuts and especially the sweet chestnuts, whose pulps and flours constitute their basic food: very nutritive, being preserved a long time, this fruit saved thousands of people from starvation. The pig (an enclosure with pig is in room N°8), when they have one of them, is killed in winter to be preserved in salt. The trunk with salt placed close to the chimney of room N°5 (in order to keep it dry) points out the importance of salt formerly, only means of preserving the meat; it could be used besides of currency or salary, this word coming from the word «salt » in french. The significant size of this chimney points out that one could sit down on both sides of a small fire.
For water, rooms N°5 and 6 have a sink, most probably supplied with faults in the wall where water spent the days of rain, or well by a system of gutter catching the water infiltrated in the ceiling, as one sees it in room N°6. The calcareous rock of its caves is indeed very porous, and it seems that the climate in the Middle Ages was wetter; the infiltrations were to thus be more significant, more especially as there was neither tar to seal off the ground of the place nor led sewers to channel water.
The evening, with the gleam of the torches or the oil lamps (of «the calels »), one continues the agricultural work, one repairs the tools... one can manufacture some by cutting flints, as during prehistory; indeed metal is expensive and moreover at the time of the periods disturbed like the great plague of 1348 there is no more blacksmith. It is necessary to point out here the terrible plagues which struck the area: crusade counters the heresy cathare in the XIIIth, wars of religion in the XVIth and especially the One Hundred Year old war which here in fact extended on more than two centuries: indeed, the English took Belvès for the first time into 1242, the town was taken and taken again fourteen times; at the end of this conflict, of the three thousand inhabitants who occupied the area before it remains nothing any more but about fifteen families, surviving among the ruins of a region made bloodless by the starvations, the epidemics of plague and the armed bands.
Certain rooms, especially towards the end of the occupation of these shelters, were used as warehouse of wood or food products for the market which was held just above under the market, as in Provins. They also could be used as workshop, witness the oil press of nut found in room N°5. Other rooms exist, but that one does not visit, after the room N°8 and on the side opposite of the ditch, which were still used or are used as cellars for the current houses.

The living conditions in these shelters appear terrible to us, almost unreal; it is necessary however to be conscious that they were the sam for a great part of the rural population, out of this ditch, which lived in thatched cottages with similar dimensions in same promiscuity and the same absence of comfort, with the ground out of beaten ground and a weak light coming from the single window of a very reduced dimension... These dwellings speak to us about the everyday life of our ancestors; the visitor has an intense emotion while «travelling »through these rooms. This troglodytic site is not really a medieval museum. It is rather «an imaginary museum» where some recreated structures, are allowing, depending of your imagination and your fantasms, to "see" the past centuries life.

FROM THE 15th OF JUNE TO THE 15th OF SEPTEMBER

Visit at 12.00 a.m ; 3.45 p.m ; 6.00 p.m every days

FROM THE 16th OF SEPTEMBER TO THE 15th OF JUNE

Visit at 11 a.m and 15.30 p.m  Sunday
Groups (max. from 10 to 18 persons) :
Anytime on appointment
Price :
Adults : 3.50 Euros - Children : 1,50 Euros - Groups : 2,50 Euros