PERPIGNAN (Spanish, Perpiñan), the ancient capital of Roussillon, and now the chief town of the department of Pyrénées Orientales, France, and a first-class fortress, stands about 66 feet above sea-level, on the right bank of the Tet, 7 miles above the point where it falls into the Mediterranean. The streets of Perpignan are narrow and crooked, and the houses have no architectural pretensions. The cathedral of St Jean, in the Third Pointed style, was commenced in 1324 by the bishop of Elue, and carried on by Sancho II., king of Majorca. The chancel, built when Louis XI. was master of Roussillon, bears the arms of France. The nave is 259 feet long, 64 wide, and 89 high. The most noteworthy feature in the building is an immense reredos of white marble, begun in 1618 by Bartholomew Soler of Barcelona. The tomb of Louis de Montmor, first French bishop of Eine after the annexation of Roussillon to France, is also worthy of notice; the black marble sarcophagus is supported by four white marble lions, and surmounted by the recumbent figure of the bishop. The bede-tower, built over a small Romanesque chapel, is crowned by an iron cage which dates from 1742. The Place de la Loge, which derives its name from the Spanish word lonja (market or bazaar), was built in 1396 in a Pointed style suggestive of the Moorish, and was intended for a cloth-exchange. The gate-house adjoining the Narbonne road, built in the time of Louis XI., has elegant turrets. The fortifications of the citadel, which is large enough to contain 2000 men, are of various times. The kings of Majorca had a castle on the terrace commanding the town, of which all that now remains is the keep. The chapel is remarkable as being a mixture of the Romanesque, Pointed, and Moorish styles; the top of its tower commands a ...view of the whole plain of Roussillon, with its flourishing market-gardens and vineyards, overhung on the south-west by Mount Canigou, and bounded by the Corbières on the north, the Albères on the south, and the Mediterranean on the east. The ramparts surrounding the citadel are the work of Louis XI., Charles V., and Vauban. The sculptures and caryatides still to be seen on the gateway were placed there by the duke of Alva. Perpignan was the seat of a university founded by the kings of Aragon, and the town still possesses an interesting museum of sculptures and pictures, where are to be seen the first photographic proofs produced by Daguerre, a natural history collection, and a library containing 30,000 volumes. In one of the squares of the town is the statue of Arago, unveiled in 1879. The manufactures of Perpignan are cloth-making, cork-cutting, tanning, and cooperage, and it has a large trade in wine, brandy, honey, fine wool, fruit, and vegetables. The population in 1881 was 31,735.
Perpignan had its origin in a Benedictine monastery, and its name first appears in charters of the 10th century. The place had already grown into a town when Philip the Bold, king of France, died there in 1285, as he was returning from an unsuccessful expedition into Aragon. At that time it belonged to the kingdom of Majorca, which was created in 1262, and its sovereigns resided there until, in 1344, that small state reverted to the possession of the kings of Aragon. When Louis XI. occupied Roussillon as security for money advanced by him to the king of Aragon, Perpignan resisted the French arms for a considerable time, and only yielded through stress of famine (15th March 1475). Roussillon was restored to Aragon by Charles VIII., and Perpignan was again besieged in 1542 by Francis I., but without success. Later on, however, the inhabitants, angered by the tyranny and cruelty of the Spanish governor, surrendered the town to Louis XIII. The citadel held out until the 9th of September 1642, and the place has ever since belonged to France, to which it was formally ceded by the treaty of the Pyrenees.
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