Prehistory and antiquity The inhabitants of Castellane are known back to a very early date.
Neolithic nomads came through the area; the oldest traces date back to 6000 BC. A grotto with
cave paintings exists in the commune but its location is kept confidential to protect the artwork;
Bronze Age tombs have also been discovered in a cave in Castillon.
Ligurian tribes occupied the territory. The Suetrii or Suètres later created an
oppidum named
Ducelia, near the Roc. They mined salt in the area and sold it. Most of the communes attached to Castellane today were peopled by the Suetrii. Taulanne was the exception, inhabited by the people who had their capital in
Senez. (Their name is uncertain and Roman historians differ on the subject.) The region was conquered by
Augustus in 14 BC. Castellane was attached to the Roman province of
Alpes-Maritimes and began to grow. Homes were established in the plain, and the city was named
Civitas Saliniensum (city of salt merchants). The name of the town later became Salinae. Several roads left from or passed through the town: • Via Salinaria, going west towards
Durance and the current
Château-Arnoux • Via Ventiana, from
Cimiez to
Sisteron by way of
Vence; a carved
milestone from the beginning of the third century was found on this road in the Saint-Pierre pass six miles from Castellane • a fork towards
Via Aurelia and Via
Domitia • a road towards
Entrevaux (
Glandèves) by way of
Briançonnet Residents first settled on the bank of the Verdon to mine the saline sources which are still visible today. A treasure of antiquity, 34 gold coins issued by
Arcadius and
Honorius, were discovered in 1797 in Taloire. A limestone funerary stele for one Julius Trofimus, dating back to Roman times, was discovered near the old chapel of Notre-Dame-du-Plan. Until 1942 it was used in a retaining wall, and can be found today in the public garden of the savings bank. The inscription is included in the (ILGN) collection of
Gallia Narbonensis Roman inscriptions and is listed on the historic register. A diocese was founded in the fifth century: its seat was transferred to Senez before the 6th century however and despite all attempts to have it return to Castellan it remained there until it was closed in the French Revolution.
Middle Ages In the early ninth century, the area around the current town of Castellane was inhabited by only 84 people. In 812 the area was invaded by Moors, also sometimes called Saracens; they destroyed
Salines, the early settlement near the salt marshes. The inhabitants of Salines took refuge on the summit of the Roc and built a stronghold there, building the first Notre-Dame there, inaugurated in 852, in thanks for the refuge. Some vestiges of this site, which was named
Sinaca in 813 and
Petra Castellana in 965, are still visible at the place now known as
Le Signal. People later also settled at the foot of the Roc in the valley bottom. In 852 a lord of Castellane, possibly named Guillaume won a victory against the Moors and put together a barony of 46 village communities stretching from
Cotignac in
Var to the south, to
Thorame-Haute in the north, and from
Soleilhas to
Esparron-de-Verdon. The Barony was considered a small sovereign state ruled by hereditary sovereign barons. still needs a reference --> Over time Castellane came to have three co-existing sites: • the Rupes, on top of the Rock, was soon entirely occupied by the castle built in 977 by Pons-Arbaud and
Aldebert • the Castrum, halfway up, on a larger site but easy to defend; • the Burgum, current site of Castellane, easily accessible, facilitating trade. In 1189, Baron de Castellane Boniface III was attacked by
Alfonso I of Provence. He had refused to do homage, explaining that he was a vassal of the Holy Roman Empire. But in the face of brute force he was forced to bend the knee. Another war broke out in 1227 between the Provence and Boniface of Castellane, presumably the son. In 1257 Charles II—then still just prince of Salernes, gave the castle to the Austinian monks. In 1262,
Charles I of Anjou defeated
Boniface of Castellane and made Castelle the seat of a
baile. In the thirteenth century, the family of Castellane lost possession of the city to the Counts of Provence. To protect themselves from attack, in addition to the protections for the city, Castellane built a series of fortified outposts at
Demandolx,
La Garde, ,
Rougon, and perhaps Taloire. In 1300 a small Jewish community of eight households was established in the area. The
Black Death reached Castellane in 1348, and was followed by a devastating flood of the
Verdon River. The capture and death of Queen
Joanna I of Naples created a succession issue in the county of Provence, the cities of the
Union of Aix (1382–1387) supporting
Charles de Duras against
Louis I of Anjou. Lord of Castellane Louis d'Anduse, also often known as Lord of La Voulte, sided with the
Duke of Anjou from the spring of 1382, supporting him on condition he participate in an expedition to rescue the queen. Castellane itself initially also backed the Duke, but changed allegiance in February 1386 after the Duke died, and rallied to the cause of the queen-regent,
Marie de Blois. She negotiated with them, hoping to set off a chain of similar declarations of support. Guillaume de Forcalquier and his son Jean Raynaut, lords of Eoulx, submitted to the Duchess in July 1386. In 1390,
Raimond de Turenne ravaged the surrounding territory and the village of Taulanne and failed to take the city, but did destroy the wooden bridge over the Verdon River. The wooden bridge over the Verdon was rebuilt in stone in the 15th century. A
monastery took care of its maintenance. The bridge on the Place Castellane put Castellane on the frequently travelled routes between the Mediterranean and the bridge over the
Durance river at
Sisteron. The bridge toll for the Verdon and the fair began at the end of the Middle Ages. The fair continued until the end of the
Ancien Régime, assuring the town relative prosperity. In the fifteenth century, a community settled on the present site of Taloire. In the middle of the fifteenth century, the upper village was completely abandoned in favor of the lowland site.
Renaissance At the end of the Middle Ages, the
transhumance system developed enormously, herds of sheep from the coast going up into the high Alpine valleys in the summer. Some
drailles (herding routes) crossed the Castellane bridge, where a toll was instituted. At the beginning of the 16th century, between 78,000 and 120,000 head were crossing each year during May and June. The imperial army of
Charles V pillaged the town en 1536. Religious unrest broke out in 1559. Brun de Caille had converted some of the townspeople of Castellane, who gathered at his home for services. A sectarian skirmish took place at his home. then established himself there after reaching an armistice with the governor of Provence, the count of
Tende,
Claude of Savoy. The town was attacked by Protestants on 4 October 1574, but the residents of Castellane and its surroundings chased them off, pursuing them as far as the
clue de Taulanne. On 30 January 1586, the and the
Duke of Lesdiguières tried to surprise the town. The sneak attack was repulsed and the Baron d'Allemagne was injured by a bullet in his back, which caused the assailants to retreat. The Baron was killed in September of that year trying to lift the siege of his own castle, shot in the head by an
arquebus. The end of the siege of Castellane has since been celebrated every year in the last weekend of January with the
Pétardiers ceremony reenacting the attack, and notably the episode of Judith André or Andrau, the goodwife of
Barrême, who killed
pétardier captain Jean Motte by pouring a kettle of boiling peas over him from the top of the ''porte de l'Annonciade'', reputed to be the weak point in the defenses. s1z
17th and 18th century The
plague struck the town again in 1630. The
Jansenist bishop
Jean Soanen tried to make the celebrations of
Saint-Sacrement,
Saint-Jean and
Saint-Éloi more sedate and less unbridled, the youth of the town having a tradition of celebrating with drums, music and gunshots. The youth refused, resisted, made even more noise and even revolted, preventing the procession of the octave du Saint-Sacrement from leaving the church on 22 June 1710. In 1726 the youth of Robion, whom the priest wanted to prevent from dancing on Sunday, also revolted. then the surrounding villages, as far as the château of
Trigance. After some difficulty, the Spanish and French armies coordinated a counteroffensive, which began at the start of January when French soldiers under the orders of the
Count of Maulévrier took an Austrian outpost in Chasteuil. The Austrian commander,
Maximilian Ulysses Browne, reinforced his right wing with four battalions garrisoned at Castellane, and six on the south bank of the Verdon. Seven other battalions formed a second available squadron. Nine battalions and ten squads of Spaniards were stationed in
Riez and 2,500 Swiss paid by Spain were stationed at Senez. On 21 January Hispano-French troops went on the offensive, commanded by the Frenchman Maulévrier and the Spanish Marquis of Taubin. The Spanish left their quarters by night and advanced on Castellane through the
clue de Taulanne, while the French passing through the Vodon gorge. The difficult marches necessary to approach in this way nonetheless allowed a coordinated attack around 7am. The first outposts were taken without difficulty, which allowed Maulévrier to connect on his left with Taubin, and to send a column of
dragoons onto the right bank to cut the Austrians' retreat. This assault took the Austrian-Sardinians fortifications without difficulty, the French-Spanish entered the town and did prevent the last Austrians from retreating. In all, they took 287 Austrians prisoner, including the baron de Neuhaus, the lieutenant-general in command. The Austrian-Sardinians also had a hundred-odd dead, versus twenty Franco-Spanish soldiers. The villages of La Garde, Eoulx, Robion, Taloire, Trigance and Comps were evacuated on 22 January. In 1760, a tax imposed by the king of Piedmont-Sardinia on sales of cloth brought a large reduction in the town's textile production. Production of , a local form of wool, and of
cordeillat, a coarse woolen fabric, continued until the Revolution, and was used by the local residents. Until the Revolution salt was produced from two local salt marshes. On the eve of the
French Revolution, several
fiefs existed on the actual territory of the commune: Éoulx, Le Castellet-de-Robion (which became a
barony in 1755), Chasteuil, Taulanne and Castillon, plus Castellane. On the same territory there were nine
parishes: Castillon, La Baume, Taulanne, La Palud, Chasteuil, Taloire, Villars-Brandis, Robion, et Castellane. The parish of Éoulx overlapped the community of La Garde. The city of Castellane alone paid more tax than
Digne; it was an important rural town, both for its judiciary functions (with eight lawyers and five prosecutors) and for its production, with twelve factories: among which were six hat shops, two wax factories, one faïence works, one tile factory, one silk fabrication works, and the leather industry was also represented. A royal post office was also installed in Castellane near the end of the
Ancien Régime.
19th century The cloth industry, already well established in the preceding century, prospered in the first half of the 19th century. But cottage industries were replaced by the Barneaud factory, built in the late 1830s on the model of the Honnorat factory in
Saint-André-de-Méouilles. It employed nine workers in 1872, then disappeared in 1878. The
coup d'état of 2 December 1851 committed by Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte against the
Second Republic provoked an armed uprising in the
Basses-Alpes in defense of the Constitution. Insurgent republicans took a number of cities in the center and south of France, including
Digne, the prefecture of the
Basses-Alpes, and held them for several days. The local fighters held out the longest, almost three weeks. But this allowed Bonaparte to portray himself as the protector of France, and many participants were sent to penal colonies in
Lambesa and
Cayenne, banished or less permanently exiled. Eight inhabitants of Castellane were brought before the
commission mixte; their most common penalty was deportation to Algeria.
20th century On 10 September 1926, the sous-préfecture was eliminated in the economic plan of
Raymond Poincaré, then re-established by the
Vichy government in June 1942. An
internment camp was built in Chaudanne during
World War II. Seventeen Jews were arrested in Castellane and deported. On 9 December 1943, the French
armée secrète (AS) and the
Francs-tireurs et partisans (FTP) attacked the construction site at the Castillon dam and seized five tonnes of explosives. The
commune was liberated 18 August 1944 by the
36th division of British infantry. In the mid-20th century
wine growing for local consumption ended. ==Demographics==