L'Isle de Noë

L'Isle de Noë, formerly L'Isle-Arbéchan, welcomed pilgrims on their way to Compostela at its Saint-Jacques hospital. L'Isle de Noë is home to the Château de l'Isle-de-Noé, on the banks of the Baïse, whose construction was completed in 1756, under the direction of the Marquis Jacques-Roger de Noé with the help of the architect Pierre Racine. The castle, which has been owned by the municipality since 1975, a historic monument, houses its kindergarten. The castle was inhabited by the Marquis Jacques-Roger de Noé, who made his daughter Charlotte the heiress to the lands and titles, and by the Count Louis de Noé, born on the island of Noë (Gers) in 1731. His son Louis-Pantaléon de Noé freed François-Dominique Toussaint Louverture, future leader of the Haitian Revolution that led to Haiti's independence, in 1776, on his plantation in Santo Domingo, long before the first abolition of slavery in France. Noë's family settled in the castle after Santo Domingo's revolution and maintained close ties with his former slave during all these years, whose cane, now in the Mirande Museum, remained in the castle for decades which became municipal property in 1975. The castle hosts an exhibition every summer mainly dedicated to the cartoonist Amédée de Noé, known as Cham, and Toussaint Louverture, the slave freed by Noë before the abolition of slavery.

Yvan Vandamme