Gex

Gex stood below the Jura's Col de la Faucille, at a meeting point of routes, woodland and pasture. Savoy annexed the surrounding country in 1353. The surviving accounts of its castellany give unusually specific evidence for late medieval building work: the old castle was restored in 1382–1385, and its defences were extensively rebuilt between 1391 and 1406, including three new towers.

The sixteenth century brought changing rulers and destruction. Bern's occupation in 1536 introduced a bailiwick whose officer combined judicial, fiscal, administrative and military powers. Geneva's council ordered the castle demolished in 1590. When Gex passed to France in 1601, the king retained the bailiwick's boundaries and the bailiff's powers. By the late seventeenth century the office had been replaced by a civil and criminal lieutenant and a subdelegate of Burgundy's intendant. Local institutions thus changed alongside the town's repeated political transfers.