Rodez

Rodez stands on a hill above the Aveyron, in the Rouergue. For centuries it was two towns, the Cité of the bishops and the Bourg of the counts of Rodez, separated by a wall and each with its own consuls and town hall. The counts, of the house of Armagnac, won the right to mint their own coin, and the rivalry between bishop and count shaped the city's growth.

After the Treaty of Brétigny in 1360 the Rouergue was ceded to England, and the French crown only regained it by 1370. In 1443 the dauphin, later Louis XI, took Rodez and forced Count Jean IV of Armagnac to submit. Bishop François d'Estaing finished the cathedral of Notre-Dame between 1510 and 1526 by adding its 87-metre bell tower, topped by a statue of the Virgin. The last count, Henry of Navarre, brought the county to the crown when he became Henry IV in 1589. Bishop Paul-Louis de Lezay de Lusignan built the episcopal palace between 1684 and 1694. In 1792 Rodez was chosen as the meeting point for the surveyors Delambre, measuring south from Dunkirk, and Méchain, measuring north from Barcelona, as they determined the length of the metre. In 1790 it became the capital of the new department of Aveyron.