Valbonne

Sister cities

• Springe

History

There are traces of prehistoric human settlement in the area that date back to the Iron Age, the first days of agriculture. Many prehistoric artifacts such as Neolithic stone axes, funeral urns from the Bronze Age, and fragments of amphora, oil and grain jars (dolia) have been excavated. The remains of an aqueduct constructed during Roman settlement in the 3rd century A.D. are also present in the area of Clausonne. In the High Middle Ages several neighbouring hamlets (Opio, Le Brusc, Sartoux, les Clausonnes and Villebruc) already existed. But the small, isolated valley of Valbonne was deserted. In 1199, the land was offered by the bishop of Antibes to the abbey of Prads (Prads-Haute-Bleone, Alpes-de-Haute-Provence) who founded the abbey of St. Mary. At the time, this area was called Vallis Bona, meaning "the good valley". Later, it became known as Valbonne. Prads and Valbonne were two of the 15 abbeys and priories of the monastic order of Chalais, an order of "Dauphinois-Provençal" monks. The order was created a century earlier and was similar to the Cistercians. The poverty of these mountain-dwellers caused their disintegration and, in 1297 the abbot of Valbonne came under the authority of the abbey of St. Andrew of Villeneuve-les-Avignon. The bishop of Grasse refused to ratify the arrangement, and in 1303 offered St. Mary to the abbey of Lérins. In 1335 the Pope settled the question – he allocated St. Mary to Lérins. At the end of the Middle Ages war, drought and the Black Death of 1351 caused the flight of the inhabitants of the surrounding villages, and left the abbey and its environs deserted. In 1486, under Louis XI, Provence was legally incorporated into the French royal domain, and this began the renaissance of the region. The village now known as Valbonne…

Geography

Valbonne is situated in a basin, halfway along the Brague river. The commune consists of two sites: * the old village situated in the extreme north-west * Sophia Antipolis in the east, around the towns of Haut-Sartoux and Garbejaïre