Pujols, Lot-et-Garonne


Pujols is a commune in the Lot-et-Garonne department in south-western France.

Geography

Location

This once fortified town lies within the municipal community of Greater Villeneuve and overlooks the Lot valley and the city of Villeneuve-sur-Lot.
Pujols is located about 19 miles north of Agen and halfway between Bordeaux and Toulouse.

Neighboring municipalities

Hydrography

The Masse, a tributary of the Lot, flows through the municipality.

Transportation

The route nationale 21 runs through the town.

Town Planning

Pujols stretches along an outcrop, and a castle once occupied the western extremity of the town, on the side of the plateau.
A passage under the bell tower of Saint Nicholas Church allows access to the old town center, which is still nestled among the remains of the town’s thirteenth century ramparts.
Pujols developed as a fortified town with a castle, a collegiate church, and a covered marketplace. It is currently a member of the organization The Most Beautiful Towns in France, registered under the name “Pujols le Haut”.

History

The town of Pujols was built on an outcrop atop a steep incline, overlooking the Lot and Masse river valleys. The Abbot Gerbeau, relying on the toponym “At the Palace” in the town cadaster of 1811, claimed that a palace dating to the High Middle Ages once occupied the western extremity of the outcrop. Pujols seems to have been relatively important at the beginning of the thirteenth century. The city walls were razed however during the Albigensian Crusade in 1229. According to the account of the royal steward of Agenais, Villefavreuse, the town seems to have been rebuilt with difficulty and only partially, while the fortified town of Villeneuve grew in the 1250s due to the arrival of Pujolais chased from Pujols. Sometime in the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century, the village was fortified with large square slabs of stone, though today there remain only the bell tower gate and the gate of the city. In 1525, Jean de Pujols and his wife established a chapter of cannons, and built Saint Nicholas Church on the northern side of the town. Towards the beginning of the sixteenth century, the rural Saint-Foy Church was rebuilt within the town’s fortifications. The houses of the sixteenth century were made with stone in half-timbered style.

Heraldry

Politics and Administration

Mayors

Demographics

Information on the evolution of the population size is available through the population censuses of Pujols, which have been conducted since 1793. Beginning in 2006, the official population count of towns has been published annually by the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies. Currently, the census relies on a method whereby the INSEE collects data little by little from every municipality and town over a five-year period. For municipalities with fewer than 10,000 inhabitants, a census survey of the entire population is conducted every five years. During the intervening years, the population size is estimated through either interpolation or extrapolation. The first exhaustive census of Pujols using the new method was carried out in 2006.
In 2015, the municipality of Pujols consisted of 3,623 inhabitants, a 0.08% decrease from 2010. During the same time period, the population of the Lot-et-Garonne department increased by 0.69%, while the French population overall increased by 2.44%.

Culture

Pujols is a member of the organization The Most Beautiful Towns in France. Located in the countryside, Pujols is a calm and peaceful town, yet it is nonetheless a vibrant and pleasant place to live, with many cultural and athletic activities. Pujols also has a municipal pool, located on Malbentre Street, which complements the municipality’s athletic and leisure activities, as well as those of the municipal community of Greater Villeneuve. In addition, Pujols opened the Museum of Traditional Toys on June 28, 2015, where it is possible to look at and play with several hundred traditional toys.

Education and youth

Pujols runs a municipal daycare center known as the “3 P’tits Tours”, which welcomes children from two and a half months to four years old. It is open non-stop from Monday to Friday, from 7:45 a.m. to 6:15 p.m.
The Welcome Center for Parents and Children is a free and friendly space for parents, grandparents, and children under the age of six, as well as expectant parents. This space provides a place to exchange ideas, to meet early childhood specialists, to participate in workshops, to prepare children for their first year of nursery or preschool, and to foster playtime among children. It is open one Wednesday every month, from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m.
The school “Petit Tour-Georges Gruelles” includes a preschool with four different classes and a primary school with nine classes ranging from first to fifth grade. The school cafeteria is open to young Pujolais on school days. The cafeteria staff ensure that the children are well-fed. Pujols also provides a daycare program for students and parents, which is open in the morning from 7:00 a.m. until 8:50 a.m., and in the evening from 5:00 p.m. until 7:00 p.m. It is a place where children can transition from family to school, as well as a space for games and socializing.
Because Pujols is part of the municipal community of Greater Villeneuve, the children of Pujols between the ages of three and eleven can take advantage of the recreation centers in Monbalen and Fongrave. On Wednesdays and during school vacations, the intermunicipal recreation centers in Monbalen and Fongrave are open to Pujolais children, as well as to children of other municipalities within the municipal community of Greater Villeneuve.

Sights and monuments

Bernard Lebrun – A Michelin star chef, and the first from the region of Villeneuve-sur-Lot.

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