1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Uzès

UZÈS, a town of southern France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Gard, finely situated on an eminence above the Alzon, 16 m. N. by E. of Nîmes by road. Pop. (1906) 4008. Uzès, the seat of an episcopal see from the 5th century to 1790, has a cathedral almost destroyed by the Protestants during the religious wars and rebuilt in the 17th and 18th centuries, but still flanked by a round tower of five storeys lighted by arched openings and dating from the 12th century. The Duché, a château of powerful lords, at first viscounts, and in 1565 dukes, of Uzès, preserves a donjon originally of the 12th century; the main building, flanked by a Gothic chapel, is Renaissance in style. The most ancient structure in the town is a crypt beneath a private house, attributed to the early centuries of the Christian era. The sub-prefecture and the tribunal of first instance occupy the old bishop's palace (17th century). There is a statue of Admiral Brueys (1753–1798), a native of the town. Uzès has a communal college for boys, and carries on the manufacture of silk, bricks and fireproof earthenware, and liquorice, and trade in the truffles for which the district is noted.