Lapalisse () is a French commune located in the department of Allier in the region of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes.
The commune is labeled a Village étape (Stopover Village) since 2006 and is part of the association Les Plus Beaux Détours de France (The Most Beautiful Detours in France). It is also recognized as a "flowered town" with two flowers and has been the patron town of the Aviso Commandant Blaison of the French Navy since 1981.
Geography Location Lapalisse is located in the eastern part of the Allier department, in the northern part of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, near Vichy. The town is situated at the crossroads of several important communication routes, which has historically made it a strategic passage point.
Six other communes border Lapalisse:
Barrais-Bussolles Billezois Périgny Saint-Prix Servilly Varennes-sur-Tèche
Hydrography The commune is crossed by the Besbre River, which has an average annual flow rate of at this point in its course. This river has shaped the local landscape and has been the source of several historic floods, notably that of 1846 which severely damaged the lower part of the town.
Climate In 2010, the climate of the commune was classified as a degraded oceanic climate of the plains of Central and Northern France, according to a study by CNRS based on data covering the period 1971-2000. In 2020, Météo-France published a typology of climates in metropolitan France in which the commune is in a transition zone between the altered oceanic climate and the mountain climate or mountain margin climate and is in the Central and northern foothills of the Massif Central climate region, characterized by dry air in summer and good sunshine..
For the period 1971-2000, the average annual temperature was , with an annual thermal amplitude of . The average annual rainfall was , with of precipitation in January and in July. For the period 1991-2020, the average annual temperature observed at the nearest Météo-France weather station, in the commune of Arfeuilles away as the crow flies,. was and the average annual rainfall was ... For the future, the commune's climate parameters estimated for 2050 under different scenarios of greenhouse gas emissions can be viewed on a dedicated website published by Météo-France in November 2022..
Urban planning Typology As of 1 January 2024, Lapalisse is categorized as a rural township, according to the new municipal density grid with 7 levels defined by Insee in 2022.. It belongs to the urban unit of Lapalisse, an intra-departmental agglomeration of which it is the central city. Furthermore, the commune is part of the attraction area of Lapalisse, of which it is the central commune.The concept of attraction area of a city replaced the former concept of urban area in October 2020, to allow for consistent comparisons with other countries in the European Union This area, which includes 9 communes, is categorized among areas with fewer than 50000 inhabitants...
Land use
The land use of the commune, as shown by the European biophysical land use database Corine Land Cover (CLC), is marked by the importance of agricultural territories (79.1% in 2018), down from 1990 (80%). The detailed distribution in 2018 is as follows: meadows (63.4%), heterogeneous agricultural areas (13.8%), forests (10.7%), urbanized areas (8.1%), industrial or commercial zones and communication networks (2.1%), arable land (1.8%)..
The IGN also provides an online tool to compare the evolution over time of land use in the commune (or in territories at different scales). Several time periods are accessible in the form of maps or aerial photographs: the Cassini map (), the état-major map (1820-1866) and the current period (1950 to present). To compare the evolution between two dates, click on the bottom of the vertical dividing line and move it to the right or left. To compare two other maps, choose the maps in the windows at the top left of the screen.
Transport and communication routes Road networks
Dating back to ancient times, the city of Lapalisse was a very important road city, from which it derived great economic prosperity from its agricultural and commercial exchanges with neighboring provinces (Roannais, Forez, Brionnais, etc.). In 1903, the sports journalist Henri Desgrange, creator of the famous Tour de France, chose to route the First Tour de France cycling race through La Palisse.
Until , the town was crossed by the Route Nationale 7 connecting Moulins and Varennes-sur-Allier to the west and then north on one hand, and toward Roanne and Lyon to the east and then south on the other, with vibrations from heavy trucks crossing the railroad crossing even causing cracks in the castle walls. Since that date, the town has been bypassed by an expressway-type route with two of 2 lanes and the old route has been downgraded to the departmental road network (RD 707).
In 2010, a western bypass was constructed by the Allier department (). This same road continues north toward Jaligny-sur-Besbre and Dompierre-sur-Besbre. South of this bypass, leads to a roundabout with , and leading to Magnet, Cusset and Vichy.
To the east, serve the eastern part of the department (toward Montaiguët-en-Forez and Marcigny).
The local service roads are: , leading to Saint-Prix, Le Breuil and the Bourbonnais mountains (Le Mayet-de-Montagne); ; leading from the town center to the train station in the commune of Saint-Prix; leading to Varennes-sur-Tèche; leading to Bert; leading to Saint-Christophe; , connecting to the western bypass ().
Rail transport The Moret - Veneux-les-Sablons - Lyon-Perrache railway line passes through the neighboring commune of Saint-Prix, where a SNCF station is located. It was closed to passenger service in 2006 to reduce the travel time of rail services between the stations of Clermont-Ferrand and Lyon-Perrache.
Etymology The name Lapalisse first appears on an ancient map from the 12th century (in 1165) referring to a chapel (Capella di Palicia). The family of the first lords of La Palice established themselves there at this time after having borne the name of the Lords of Lubié, of La Motte des Noyers.
The spelling has varied over the centuries between "La Palice" and "La Palisse". Until the French Revolution, the name was written as two words. It was in 1789 that the spelling "Lapalisse" was definitively adopted.
History Antiquity The first trace of occupation at the place called Lubié or Lubillet predates by several centuries the definitive establishment of the former Lipidiacus (La Palisse), on the banks of the Besbre River.
Ancient pottery workshop of Lubié
At Lubié there is a Gallo-Roman pottery workshop., . The style of BANUUS III is one of the most characteristic creations of this workshop.
The Chez-Duret site, in the southwest of the commune, was the subject of a preventive excavation in 1996 as part of the development of the bypass by National Route 7..
Middle Ages and Renaissance In 1429, Charles, Duke of Bourbon, purchased the seigneurial domain of La Palice from Jeanne de Châtillon and resold it for 6,000 gold écus in 1430 to Jacques I, one of the last two representatives of the Chabannes family, which dates back to the year 1000. This sum was partly financed by the ransoms of English knights captured during the siege of Orléans. Jacques I and his brother Antoine, Count of Dammartin, were among the great leaders who, like Joan of Arc and at her side, contributed to the defeat of the English during the Hundred Years' War.
From the Late Middle Ages to the French Revolution What might the small town of La Palisse have looked like at the beginning of the ? Probably the major works of redevelopment of the city with the razing of the old medieval ramparts of the city and the enlargement of the old castle, left at the beginning of this building revival, to travelers passing through, an impression of disorder and insalubrity? Coming from his native French Flanders, Jacques Lesaige, a wealthy draper merchant from Douai, setting out at Easter 1518 for a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, notes in his Memoirs having crossed the small city on the banks of the Besbre:
"From Varenne to La Palisse, four leagues. It is a small ugly (layde) and dirty (orde) town. There is a small castle. We dined there and I spent (despendis) 8 groats (gros)"Chy S'ensuyvent les gistes, repaistres et depens que moy Jacques Le Saige marchand demourant à Douay au faict de Douay à Rome (...) Edition Douay 1525 -- Jacques Lesage; Voyage en Terre sainte d'un marchand de Douai en 1519. by Yvonne Bellenger. Edition Balland 1989 (based on the manuscript of J. Lesage, modern text and presentation)
Being very devout, the wealthy Douai draper Jacques Lesage, who was then heading to Rome with his four companions, very probably during his itinerary, dined and stayed at the hostellerie du Puits de l'Image in La Palisse, a hotel facing the old Royal Road (current rue de la Liberté). Skirting the structures of the old fortress of La Palisse, one can easily imagine what was then all the discomfort and insalubrity of this hilly street, composed during the bad season, of stones and mire.
In his famous Guide des Chemins de France published in 1552, the learned scholar Charles Estienne, mentioned with precision the various stages of the old royal roads, crossing the provinces of the kingdom of France, including those of Bourbonnais, which he calls after Moulins, the "Grand Chemin de Lyon" (Great Road to Lyon).
Always a road city, La Palisse, located on one of the most important roads in France (Paris-Lyon), experienced in the a prosperous attractiveness through its flows of travelers frequenting its numerous inns, through the passage of Mail coaches (post horses) and its post relay where the authority of a postmaster was exercised over the postilions. At the beginning of the , sieur Pierre Mareschal, postmaster in 1612 at La Palisse, also served as "Chevaucheur du Roi" (King's Rider).
Taking the great royal road from Paris to Lyon, the Parisian writer and traveler Jean-Jacques Bouchard (1606-1641), in his journey from Paris to Rome made in 1630, crosses the small city of La Palisse; like the Florentine Benvenuto Cellini a century earlier, he gives, in his Confessions, a picturesque and not very reassuring portrait of the region, a country then traversed by plunderers and highwaymen:
"...La Palisse, 2 leagues [from Parigny], small strong town situated on a very steep mountain. There is an old fortress. One must leave early, in order to pass by day the valley of La Palisse, which is full of woods and commanded by mountains, from where the robbers who are always in good number in this forest, discover from afar the passersby and come to assail them unexpectedly; this passage was then all full of soldiers disbanded from the army of Italy, who nevertheless did no violence out of respect for the Marquis of Effiat,Antoine Coëffier de Ruzé d'Effiat. superintendent of finances, who passed that same afternoon in a litter with his wife. (...)Les Confessions, de Jean-Jacques Bouchard parisien, suivies de son Voyage de Paris à Rome en 1630, Liseux, 1881, ."
An ordinance of 16 December 1666 by Monseigneur d'Estaing, authorizes the foundation in La Palisse of a convent of hospital nuns. This act of foundation was confirmed shortly after, by letters patent given by King Louis XIV at Compiègne in June 1667, providing regulations for the establishment of hospital nuns in the town of La Palice, registered on 14 August 1668. This convent-hospice, named "La Providence", was founded under the impetus of Marshal Claude Maximilien de La Guiche, Lord of La Palisse, by Augustinian sisters from Riom.
18th to 19th century: the beginnings of an agricultural and artisanal economy of great importance