Saint-Michel-d'Euzet
Saint -Michel- d'Euzet is a commune with 584 inhabitants (as of January 1, 2011 ) in the department of Gard of the Languedoc -Roussillon region.
Geography
Saint -Michel- d'Euzet situated on a hill on the left lower reaches of the Céze, about 10 km north- west of Bagnols -sur -Cèze. The village is located between a small forest area called Bois de Valbonne and the river Céze. The soil consists of rocks of the Upper Cretaceous. The hill Devès is the highest point of the municipality. In the north, the village is bounded by a hill called Traves. Is dominated Saint -Michel- d'Euzet especially from viticulture.
The neighboring municipalities of Saint- Michel Saint- Paulet - d'Euzet are de - Caisson in the north, Carsan in the Northeast, Saint- Gervais in the east, Sabran in the south, La Roque- sur -Cèze in the southwest and Saint -Laurent -de- carnols in the northwest.
History
The territory has been inhabited since the Stone Age, what occupy numerous finds. The present village was founded at a not exactly known time, but probably towards the end of the 1st millennium. It was a settlement, which consisted only of a few houses. The name component Euzet derives from the Occitan word euse, which means oak. This can be explained by the numerous occurrences of this tree in the region. The name component Saint -Michel was probably added in the Middle Ages. Mainly because the village was located at the crossroads of important trade routes, it was fortified in the Middle Ages. A part of the municipal territory was administered from 1204 by the Carthusian Monastery of Valbonne in the neighboring Saint- Paulet -de- Caisson. Thanks to the construction of a small church, which probably served as a cemetery chapel at the beginning, the size of the place grew at about the same time.