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Aurillac developed around the Benedictine abbey of Saint-Geraud. Originally, it was the domain of Aurelius: Aureliacum. The rich man moved his Gallo-Roman remains well beyond the Temple of Aaron, at the mouth of the valley of the Jordanne, the territory that perpetuated his name and become one of the town of Aurillac.

This site opens wide like a fan ...

The edge of the Languedoc and Quercy, at the foot of the last foothills of the Cantal volcano, the site called sort of urban life. Yet for a long time, we know nothing, except that a castle rose on the heights overlooking the town to the north. He belonged in the first half of the ninth century a man of high birth, the son, believed to be the first Count Gerard of Auvergne, who built in the meadow at the foot of the castle, a small church dedicated to St. Clement which implies that some houses had to be grouped around the castle once called Chateau Saint-Etienne.

When he died, his son Gerald inherited his vast estates which extended, says the chronicler, in the Puy Griou Rouergue and Périgord. Gerald was a man renowned for his piety and goodness. He decided to found an abbey that he would give all his property and built, to 896, the church of the future monastery next to the one his father had to build. She was under the dual patronage of St. Peter and St. Clement's, before taking the latest of its founder: Saint-Geraud.

After the death of Gerald (around 910) ...

After the death of St. Geraud, the miracles that occurred around his tomb attracted such crowds of "crowds from the most distant countries," we had to build a larger church. Stephen II, bishop of Auvergne, the focus came in 972 and, says a document of that year, the bishop decided that the church in Aurillac is now considered the second of his bishopric after that of its head Bishops in Clermont.

In finishing 10th century, the abbey was in full swing ...

And it went out of his school as the monk Gerbert, one of the greatest scholars of his time, the "kingmaker", became pope under the name of Sylvester second in 999.

The pilgrims, among whom he takes the old King Robert, continued to arrive. One of them, Bernard of Angers, tells how, on his way to Conques around the year 1010, he made the trip to Aurillac attracted by the fame of the "majesty" of St. Gerald "resplendent with gold the purest and most precious jewels. " That of St. Foy in Conques, we can imagine what that of Saint Geraud.

In the second part of the 11th century ...

The church was again remodeled and Pope Urban II, returning to preach the crusade at the Council of Clermont, stopped here in 1095 to spend again. But around the abbey, was developing a small town which gradually spread westward along the Jordanne and on the hillside of Aurinques. A first enclosure, soon became too narrow, was supplemented by a second in the west and the complex was renovated in 1347. This development of the medieval city is clearly visible on any current plan.

The "bourgeois" of Aurillac, ie citizens of the city, appeared for the first time in the texts in the late 12th century. Their trade is active, they are found even in the famous Champagne fairs. At the center of town, they built a church dedicated to Our Lady on the site of the current City Hall and very early to give consuls (judges, municipal ...), according to Father remains the lord for whom they fight if the cry of "Aorlhac, Aorlhac, per san Guiral and the blind" (Aurillac, Aurillac, Saint-Geraud and Abbot). We are in the land of Oc.

This good agreement lasted until the crisis of the Albigensian war. In 1233, riots broke out in town. The Château Saint-Etienne, home of the Father, is destroyed. Therefore, the struggles were continually punctuated by conventions called "Peace of Aurillac," passed in 1280.1298 and 1347 between the abbot and the bourgeois.

A few years later the English wars starting ...

In Auvergne, the region of Aurillac had especially to suffer the ravages of the road bands who tried in vain to take the city protected by its ramparts and gates padlocked. Several times she had to pay heavy tribute to ward off looters. Yet during this period that was finally fixed in 1366, the seat of royal bailiwick of the mountains, thus affirming the role of administrative capital of the oldest town in Haute-Auvergne.

When peace returned, begins in the late Middle Ages, a time of reconstruction followed by a period of relative prosperity that came to disturb the religious wars. The abbey, which had been secularized in 1561, was totally destroyed in 1569 by Protestants, like other monuments of the city.

However, once restored the ruins, Aurillac reached adulthood, freed from the tutelage of the Abbey continues to grow on its initial momentum. City of Commerce and gown - officers to enlist Bailiwick came in 1552 those of the court presidial - it begins to slip out of its walls no longer needed for defense. "Major Town", it was in 1775, according to the Comptroller of twentieths, "large population" and "well-built houses." Naturally, when creating the department in 1790, it solicited the first place.

Saint-Flour, its rival beyond the mountains, do not agree. The system of alternation cut their quarrel. He was brought to an end pretty quickly and Aurillac finally became the capital of the Cantal. The 18th century saw the erosion of its walls, but the city was barely out of the confines of the 14th century. Not until the 19th century and especially the arrival of the railway in 1886 to attend a new thrust to the West that continues today.

A place of trade and commerce ...

For the entire department, but Aurillac is a crossroads city on the banks of the Jordanne is also a cultural and tourist center where a large active youth is welcomed in its secondary schools, and, more recently, higher.