1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Romans

ROMANS, a town of south-eastern France, in the department of Drôme, 12½ m. N.E. of Valence on the railway to Grenoble. Pop. (1906) town, 13,304; commune, 17,622. Romans stands on an eminence on the right bank of the Isère, a fine stone bridge uniting it with Bourg-de-Peage (pop. 4668) on the other side of the river. Both towns owe their prosperity to their situation in the most fertile part of the valley of the Isère. The present parish church belonged to an abbey founded in 837 by St Bernard, bishop of Vienne. The principal portal is a fine specimen of 12th-century Romanesque, and the lower part of the nave is of the same period; the choir and the transept are striking examples of the style of the 13th century.

Romans has a tribunal of commerce and a communal college. Its industries include tanning, leather-dressing and shoe-making, silk-spinning, hat-making, absinthe-distilling and oil-refining. There is trade in walnuts, walnut-oil, silk, cattle, &c.