La Mure-Argens

Overview

commune

Where to stay in La Mure-Argens

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What to see, what to do

Parish church of Notre-Dame (La Mure)

The parish church at the far end of the village, dedicated to Notre-Dame (de Vauvert according to the commune); a lintel bears the date 1700 but the building is older. It holds paintings dated between 1650 and 1680. A church of Sainte-Marie already featured in the 1042 donation to the Abbey of Saint-Victor in Marseille.

Church of Notre-Dame-de-Beaulieu (Argens)

The church of the hamlet of Argens, built from 1664 to 1667, with rib vaults, long reputed one of the finest in the diocese; it has a bell (1765) and a clock (1926). Argens, one of the oldest villages in Haute-Provence, is said to have been destroyed at the end of the 6th century and rebuilt on its present site.

Chapel of Saint-Joseph

The village chapel, where the procession for the 15 August festival takes place.

Former cloth factory and flour mill

A woollen cloth factory set up in 1835 along the Issole by Adrien Pascal; it employed up to eighty workers in the mid-19th century. It was followed by a flour mill founded in 1902 by Achille Dol, which supplied flour to bakeries across the region as far as the Côte d'Azur, together with a pasta works.

Stations and the train des Pignes line

The Nice-Digne line, opened in August 1911, served the commune with the stations of La Mure and Allons-Argens; it played a major part in bringing in raw materials and shipping out the products of the local factories.

History of La Mure-Argens

The name La Mure is attested around 1030 (Mura, from the Occitan word for house walls) and that of Argens around 1200 (from the Roman Argenteus, sometimes linked to former silver mines). Around 1030 the lordship of Mura belonged to Jonas and Mainard; in 1042 a donation to the Abbey of Saint-Victor in Marseille included a church dedicated to the Virgin and set boundaries roughly matching those of the present commune. The village of La Mure as it appears today dates mainly from the 18th and 19th centuries. Argens, which is older, is said to have been destroyed at the end of the 6th century and then rebuilt. In the 19th century the commune lived from textiles (the Pascal cloth mill, 1835) and then from flour milling; after 1945 lavender expanded strongly (from a single field to about 200, some forty hectares) with a distillery at Argens. The former communes of La Mure and Argens merged in 1974. The economy now rests on sheep and goat farming, cereals and nature tourism; the population, after a long decline, is recovering and exceeds 340 inhabitants.