Old Montferrand is not exactly what we imagine. We think of it as a district (although it is older) of the Auvergne metropolis. It is a real town, a calm, attractive haven, like a secret, where life is good. Make no mistake, you are in a separate town, independent for a long time, and proud enough of that fact for it not to be forgotten. Indeed it is sometimes still missed.

Two royal edicts were needed, in 1630 under Louis XIII and in 1731, under Louis XV, to permanently join together Montferrand and Clermont as Clermont-Ferrand, a town with two heads and two centres. This marriage, which was considered necessary, turned the rich, powerful town of Montferrand into an obscure, poor place for two centuries.

This may have been a stroke of luck. Thanks to this decline, which kept it out of view of urban developers, the area was spared any modernisation plans, almost all construction or, even worse, inopportune destruction. This means that the Montferrand we find today, with very little imagination, appears almost the same as it was left by the royal edict.

A visit to Montferrand is different, since there is very little monumental public architecture, with the exception of the beautiful gothic church. The convents, fortress, ramparts and towers did not resist the erosion of time, but the private homes, alleys, sculptures, corridors, gates, galleries, balustrades, pavements are still there, and it is a pleasure to find so much secret harmony, so much discrete luxury.

Rue de la Rodade...

The meeting point between two Auvergnes
Montferrand is also where two Auvergnes meet. The Auvergne of the high and mighty, lords, bankers, traders, and the Auvergne of the ordinary people, peasants, winemakers, artisans. Moving through the streets, a detail here, a view there, evokes sometimes one, with a Renaissance-style window decoration in fine Volvic lava, with large warehouses and aligned boutiques, and sometimes the other, nearer to us and sometimes still present, with its sombre, mysterious wine stores, the smell of hay barns, its wooden shoes and its bourrée music played on the hurdy gurdy.

Before entering this world with eyes wide open, to aid our curiosity and to better understand, take a step back into the past. Montferrand was founded relatively recently. It is not yet a thousand years old. The counts of Auvergne built on the Montferrand mound at the beginning of the XII century. They erected a fortress to serve as a base for attacks on Clermont, the Episcopal town which they wanted to capture. The assault did not last long. The Bishop had called on King Louis VI the Fat, King of France, his liege lord, for help, and the arrival of the Duke of Aquitaine, the Count’s liege lord, froze the situation. The two authorities preferred to talk rather than to undertake a difficult war. The decision was for the Bishop to return to Clermont, and since Montferrand existed, the Count could settle there.

This wasn’t a particularly fair solution since, on withdrawing, the royal army had only left one tower and its ramparts. But, regardless of whether the treaty had been concluded in time to save the tower from destruction, the fact remained that it had not been taken by the king’s soldiers. Montferrand’s reputation as an impregnable place began to spread. Merchants were particularly interested, especially because the town was very well situated at a crossroads on major trade routes. The Counts installed their court there and the commercial rise began.
The castle, and the new ramparts and moats, meant that the town retained a military character, but its structures had a new purpose. They now served to protect the riches, markets, convents and the influx of people and goods attracted to this rising town.
Following the problems which, at the end of the XII century ruined the Auvergne, a pawn in the rivalry between the kings of France and England, the counts abandoned their court at Montferrand.

A town with a commercial vocation

To relaunch business activity and to confirm its commercial vocation, the dowager countess of Montferrand, known as Countess G., Countess Brayère, and her son William, produced a remarkable franchise charter at the very end of the XII century, "giving the town to all the men and women who would take a house and reside there", setting up a body of consuls elected by the inhabitants and charged with management and policing. The town was extended to the west by renting in perpetuity parcels of land of equal dimension for a very low sum. Today this is still marked by the checkerboard shape of the roads. A new town required new protection. The castle defences were reinforced to the west, the weak point, by a series of towers enclosing a chicane. Today this is hidden by the built up housing around the church. New ramparts also needed to be built around the town. 1772 metres long, this was 250 metres longer than the Carcassonne ramparts. In the XV century, it became necessary to build more ramparts since the town had grown so much to the west.

The wall had four gates, Bel Regard to the west (Place de la Rodade), l’Hôpital (place de la Fontaine) and la Poterne (emerging from the Rue Temple) to the south, Bise (Place des Cordeliers) to the North, held out during the wars against the English and their Gascon allies, as well as during the religious wars. The town was never taken by force, however it succumbed to trickery and on 7 February 1388, Routier Captain Perrot le Béarnais was able to capture it. The pillage lasted fifteen hours! At the beginning of the XIII century religious orders and hospital establishments also came to Montferrand, the best known being the Herbet Leprosarium. There were three churches and eight religious houses, including the Templars.

The popular markets (which took place every Friday, a tradition which remains today), opulent fairs (Kings’ Fair in January, Provisions Fair in February, the most important of all, and which is remembered today by the Sauvagine Fair, the Lent Fair, the Fair of Saint Andrew at the end of November) all made the merchants rich. This richness created and attracted the powerful. To this was soon added the prestige brought by many courts of justice settled by magistrates and their followers, which in turn drew many of those subject to trial to the town, which became a royal possession at the end of the XIII century. A mint was established, then a money market and a salt store - At the time the sale of salt, a precious commodity, was a royal monopoly. It therefore required a body of officials and a tribunal to punish fraud - and in particular the royal bailiwick which, by bringing the King’s justice to the heart of the Auvergne, helped commercial development and enhanced the glory of the town in which it was to be found. The bankers and nobles at their peak built luxurious homes, when a Court of Aids was created, the highest civil and criminal jurisdiction in fiscal matters, only answerable to the Parliament in Paris. This court sat in the Palais-Vieux, of which a monumental door can still be seen in the Rue du Temple.

Decline and rebirth

But behind this peak, the signs of future decline could clearly be seen. Important, jealous towns were expanding too close by, Clermont, Riom. Their claims were not always without foundation. Clermont, in particular, angered and irritated by its rival, which was holding back its commercial and administrative expansion, increased its attempts to eliminate its competitor.

In 1630, these efforts achieved partial success. King Louis XIII signed the Edict of Troyes uniting the two towns and transferring the Court of Aids to Clermont. A 1731 edict confirmed the edict of 1630, leaving the inhabitants of Montferrand bitterly regretting, but not resigned to becoming a distant suburb of Clermont. Deserted by the rich and the great, Montferrand became a village of wine growers and farmers, nicknamed the "mulets blancs" ("white mules") who continued the fight for independence throughout the XIX century and right up to the beginning of the XX century, but always in vain.

Montferrand was overcome, slowly, completely encircled by industrial building and worker housing. However, in 1962, a law was passed which designated it as a "Protected area" and authorised the restoration of its most beautiful buildings. The Clermont-Ferrand authorities undertook a vast renovation task which today, although still continuing, has given Montferrand back its former splendour, and developed tourism. A new page in its story has begun, the rebirth of Montferrand.

Houses of the XV and XVI centuries

Montferrand, even today, begins with the old ramparts (probably dating from the XVI century), of which substantial remains still exist, Rue des Fossés under le Séminaire, Rue des Fossés under la Rodade, a tower in Rue de la Gravière.

The town as a whole is dominated by the circular Place Marcel Sembat, the site of the old castle of which today only a large tower remains at the entrance to the Petite Rue du Château, and the topsy-turvy layout of houses in relation to the two main roads which cross at right angles, Rue des Cordeliers and Rue Jules Guesde (north/south) and the Rue du Séminaire and Rue de la Rodade (east/west). Most roads run parallel to these routes. However, the slight curve in Rue Marmilhat and Rue du Moulin shows the town’s successive expansion towards the west. It is along the two main perpendicular roads that most of the attractive buildings of the XV and XVI centuries can be found. There are two types of building. One type consists of a large stone house with two main buildings linked by galleries where most decoration is concentrated in the internal courtyard (staircase tower, galleries), sometimes with an external monumental door. The other type is a timber framed house with projecting upper stores, where the upper floors protrude beyond the lower floor. This type of building can only be found on the east/west axis.

In Montferrand, Volvic lava (andesite) was used most often from the XIII century, either for decoration (sculptures) or for window arches or frames. It was even used for entire façades (Rue Jules Guesde, Rue des Cordeliers).

Michel Proslier