Aire

Aire stands on the Adour in Gascony, within the Tursan country of southwestern France. Its older name, Atura, is associated with the river. The town became a bishop's seat, and its religious buildings and position on the road to Santiago de Compostela connected it to a wider network of pilgrimage.

The church of Sainte-Quitterie above the town preserves an older apse and Gothic work from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In 1814, during the fighting in southwestern France, Wellington's forces defeated troops under Marshal Soult near Aire. Vineyards remain a feature of the surrounding Tursan countryside.