1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Pithiviers

PITHIVIERS, a town of north central France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Loiret, 28 m. N.N.E. of Orleans, on the railway to Malesherbes. Pop. (1906), 5676. The church of St Solomon, chiefly in the Renaissance style, and remains of the ancient ramparts are of interest. Statues have been erected of the mathematician Denis Poisson (d. 1840), and of the physician and agriculturist Duhamel de Monceau (d. 1782), natives of Pithiviers. The town is an agricultural market, and an important centre for the saffron of the region of Gatinaris the cultivation of which, originally introduced by the Jews of Avignon in the 12th century was fostered by Louis XIV. The shrine of St Solomon in the 9th century and that of St Gregory, an Armenian bishop, in the 10th, formed the nuclei of the town; and the donjon built at the end of the 10th century for Héloise, lady of Pithiviers, was one of the finest of the period.