Circulades and Castellas

In terms of building traditions, circular forms are not exclusive to the Middle Ages. You can, for example, see them used in dwellings or burial places amongst peoples of the Neolithic period and these forms are still in use in some African countries. The circle has an age-old symbolic value and is often connected with places of worship.

The medieval “circulade” as found in the villages of Le Pouget, Puéchabon, Saint-Jean-de-Fos and Saint-Pargoire arose primarily out of the need to defend the sites.

This is where the value of the circular shape can most clearly be seen, in grouping people around the developing strongholds, in adapting the settlement to its situation on a steep promontory, in the way that the streets converge on the urban centre (the church and the castle), and in the way that it facilitates the system of defence by eliminating any blind spots. The “circulade” is not so much a reaffirmation of pre-existing models as an original and inventive synthesis of the value of circular and derived forms in the feudal period.