Every design for Montélimar

Nougat made Montélimar's name far beyond the Drôme: the local sweet counts among the thirteen desserts of Provence, and the Beatles slipped it into the opening lines of 'Savoy Truffle'. Yet the town's story starts long before the confectioners. People lived here in Celtic times, the Romans rebuilt the settlement with a basilica, aqueducts, baths and a forum, and the remains of a Gallo-Roman bath complex can still be seen. In the Middle Ages the Adhémar family ruled the town and built the castle that still bears their name.

Older travellers remember Montélimar as the stop on the main road south, where you bought a box of nougat for the family before carrying on to the south of France. Then the autoroute arrived, the traffic swept past, and many nougat makers had to close. The Palais des bonbons et du nougat and La Salle des Nougats keep the tradition alive, and the Porte Saint-Martin still leads into the old streets.

Above them all stands the Château de Montélimar, the Adhémar stronghold, which still dominates the town's silhouette as it has for centuries.