#digne

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to find contemporary maps of Digne, except for this one from a Carte générale de la France (Cassini de Thury) that is luckily from exactly the right year (1815) but doesn’t really help much because it doesn’t really show much detail of the city and it’s also very difficult to read:

The Carte de l’état-major 1820-1866 is much more vague in terms of date, but I find it more useful:

I would be willing to guess that it’s probably still fairly close to Digne in 1815. Aside from the lack of walls, which I don’t think you can see on this map, but definitely would have been there in 1815. Hugo even mentions the walls:

He retraced his steps; the gates of Digne were closed. Digne, which had sustained sieges during the wars of religion, was still surrounded in 1815 by ancient walls flanked by square towers which have been demolished since.

I was also able to find a map from 1921, which is over a century later, but it’s the oldest proper map of the city I could track down: (Here zoomed in to focus on the old city)

From something too recent to something much too old: an artist’s impression of medieval Digne, which actually shows the city walls:

There would have been more roads and streets and buildings outside of the walls in 1815, including the Boulevard Gassendi, which Hugo also mentions, as well as a bridge over the Bléone, but honestly it seems like the city actually hadn’t grown that much over the centuries.

It would grow over the course of the 19th century, though.

I’ll talk a little bit more later about the cathedral, the episcopal palace, etc. This post is getting too long!

Image Sources:

Digne-les-Bains official website (Jean-Claude Golvin)

Wikipedia / Wikimedia Commons (photographs by Denis Champollion, Szeder László)

Carte générale de la France (Cassini de Thury) from BNF Gallica

Guide pittoresque du voyageur en France (Eusèbe Girault de Saint-Fargeau) from BNF Gallica

Carte de l’état-major 1820-1866 from Géoportail (Institut national de l’information géographique et forestière)

Carte de la Provence (1921) : Digne (Les Guides bleus, Hachette, édition 1922)

Présentation de Digne-les-Bains from France Geo

dignois . fr / Digne-vieux