Rouergue

Coat of arms of the county of Rouergue

Rouergue (Occitan: Roergue) is a former province of France, bounded on the north by Auvergne, on the south and southwest by Languedoc, on the east by Gévaudan and on the west by Quercy. Its capital is Rodez.

Rouergue was turned into a département in 1790, which was called Aveyron, after the main river flowing through it. When the Tarn-et-Garonne département was created in 1808, Aveyron had to relinquish the extreme west of its territory, which became part of Tarn-et-Garonne, so that today most of Rouergue is the Aveyron département, while a small part of Rouergue is the extreme east of Tarn-et-Garonne.

The province of Rouergue has a land area of 9,007 km² (3,478 sq. miles). At the 1999 census there were 269,774 inhabitants on the territory of the province of Rouergue, which means a density of only 30 inh. per km² (78 inh. per sq. mile). The largest urban areas are Rodez, with 38,458 inhabitants in 1999, Millau, with 22,840 inhabitants in 1999, Decazeville, with 17,044 inhabitants in 1999, and Villefranche-de-Rouergue, with 12,561 inhabitants in 1999.

Rouergue included the county of Rodez, and was divided between the dioceses of Rodez and Vabres.

During the Middle Ages, Rouergue changed hands a number of times, its rulers including England (due to the Treaty of Brétigny in 1360), Armagnac, and Languedoc.

See also

• Counts of Rouergue
• Counts of Toulouse