Maison de la Taverne

13th century house, also called House of the Tavern. Big bourgeois house that belonged to a rich cloth merchant.
The Tavern house is one of the most emblematic medieval houses in Caussade. It was built in the 13th century, at the time of the expansion of the medieval town. Formerly called “Widows’ House”, it is today called “Tavern Tower”.

The tower has three floors, formerly devoted to social and domestic life, as well as a ground floor whose arcades indicate the presence of commercial spaces.

In the 15th century, the tower belonged to a rich family of draper merchants, the Missolières. The iron rings on the facade were used to hang draperies on holidays or to protect from the sun.

This house was chosen by Viollet-le-Duc to serve as a typical 13th century dwelling in the south-west of France: tower houses or dwellings of noble families or the upper middle class. Viollet-le-Duc represents it in his reasoned dictionary of French architecture but took the liberty of restoring the twin bays of the first floor (replaced in the 15th century by cross windows) and added a soleiho (a covered gallery installed under the roof and used for drying fruits and vegetables).