Domme Bastide
— — the long curve of the river below.
Not only on a wall.
“A 13th-century bastide on a limestone cliff 150 metres above the Dordogne. Founded in 1281 by Philip the Bold, planned on a grid, walled. From the Belvédère de la Barre the panorama follows the river from the Montfort meander to the east, past Cénac on the floodplain, west past the cliffs of La Roque-Gageac, until the valley turns out of sight. Inside the ramparts the streets keep the original grid. The Porte des Tours still carries the graffiti the Templars cut into the stone after their imprisonment in 1307. From the overlook the view does not change much, and that is the point.
Domme Bastide, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
The place, in three passes.
Domme is a fortified bastide in the Dordogne department of Nouvelle-Aquitaine, southwestern France, and one of Les Plus Beaux Villages de France. The town stands on a limestone promontory roughly 150 metres above the Dordogne River, at 250 metres above sea level, with a clifftop esplanade running along the southern edge. King Philip III of France founded the bastide in 1281 as part of the royal bastide programme, the planned grid-towns built across Périgord and Gascony in the late 13th century. The walls and gates were completed by 1310. Three medieval gates still anchor the ramparts: the Porte des Tours, the Porte del Bos, and the Porte de la Combe. Sarlat-la-Canéda, the larger Périgord market town, sits about 12 kilometres north.
The bastide layout was a 13th-century French royal answer to the Aquitaine frontier: a planned grid of streets, a central market square, and a continuous wall pierced by gated towers. Domme keeps almost all of it. The Porte des Tours, two cylindrical towers built into the southeastern wall, served as a Templar prison after Philip IV's mass arrests of the order in October 1307. Roughly seventy Knights Templar were held in the eastern tower between 1307 and 1318. The graffiti they cut into the limestone, including crosses, a crucifixion scene, and a coded geometry of squares and octagons, remains visible on the interior walls. The yellow Périgord stone the town is built from comes from the same Jurassic limestone bed that forms the cliff itself.
The Belvédère de la Barre is the public esplanade along the southern rim of the cliff, with an open panorama over the Dordogne valley. The view follows the river from the Cingle de Montfort upstream to the east, around the floodplain at Cénac, and west past the cliffs of La Roque-Gageac about five kilometres downstream. The Dordogne itself runs 483 kilometres from the Massif Central to the Gironde estuary. Hot-air balloons lift from the valley at first light through the spring and summer season. Photographers favour the hour before sunset, when the limestone of the cliff itself turns warm in the light, and the river below lies in deeper shadow.