Castellane (French pronunciation: [kastɛlan]; Provençal Occitan: Castelana) is a commune in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region in Southeastern France.

Two reservoirs are located in the territory of Castellane: The area has two water gaps: The GR 4 hiking trail crosses through the town.

The commune is part of the Jurassic limestone area of the French Prealps in Provence, formed by the tectonic upheaval of the Alps during the Tertiary.

Limestone deposits run the length of the Verdon river, giving rise to spectacular gorges formed through karst erosion.

[21] Several roads left from or passed through the town: Residents first settled on the bank of the Verdon to mine the saline sources which are still visible today.

A limestone funerary stele for one Julius Trofimus, dating back to Roman times, was discovered near the old chapel of Notre-Dame-du-Plan.

In 852 a lord of Castellane, possibly named Guillaume[28] won a victory against the Moors and put together a barony of 46 village communities stretching from Cotignac in Var to the south, to Thorame-Haute in the north, and from Soleilhas to Esparron-de-Verdon.

The capture and death of Queen Joanna I of Naples created a succession issue in the county of Provence, the cities of the Union of Aix (1382–1387) supporting Charles de Duras against Louis I of Anjou.

Guillaume de Forcalquier and his son Jean Raynaut, lords of Eoulx, submitted to the Duchess in July 1386.

In 1390, Raymond de Turenne [fr] ravaged the surrounding territory and the village of Taulanne and failed to take the city, but did destroy the wooden bridge over the Verdon River.

At the end of the Middle Ages, the transhumance system developed enormously, herds of sheep from the coast going up into the high Alpine valleys in the summer.

[26] Huguenot captain Paulon de Mauvans [fr], of another rich Protestant family, sacked the town in the summer of 1560,[40] then established himself there after reaching an armistice with the governor of Provence, the count of Tende, Claude of Savoy.

[citation needed] The town was attacked by Protestants on 4 October 1574, but the residents of Castellane and its surroundings chased them off, pursuing them as far as the clue de Taulanne.

[42] The end of the siege of Castellane has since been celebrated every year in the last weekend of January with the Pétardiers ceremony reenacting the attack, and notably the episode of Judith André or Andrau, the goodwife of Barrême,[43] who killed pétardier captain Jean Motte by pouring a kettle of boiling peas over him from the top of the porte de l'Annonciade, reputed to be the weak point in the defenses.

The youth refused, resisted, made even more noise and even revolted, preventing the procession of the octave du Saint-Sacrement from leaving the church on 22 June 1710.

[48] The Austrian commander, Maximilian Ulysses Browne, reinforced his right wing with four battalions garrisoned at Castellane, and six on the south bank of the Verdon.

[49] The Spanish left their quarters by night and advanced on Castellane through the clue de Taulanne, while the French passing through the Vodon gorge.

The first outposts were taken without difficulty, which allowed Maulévrier to connect on his left with Taubin, and to send a column of dragoons onto the right bank to cut the Austrians' retreat.

In 1760, a tax imposed by the king of Piedmont-Sardinia on sales of cloth brought a large reduction in the town's textile production.

On the eve of the French Revolution, several fiefs existed on the actual territory of the commune: Éoulx, Le Castellet-de-Robion (which became a barony in 1755), Chasteuil, Taulanne and Castillon, plus Castellane.

The loi de finances du 15 septembre 1807 specified its methods, but its accomplishment took time to get started, since the officials conducting the cadastre dealt with the communes in successive geographic groups.

[55] The coup d'état of 2 December 1851 committed by Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte against the Second Republic provoked an armed uprising in the Basses-Alpes in defense of the Constitution.

Insurgent republicans took a number of cities in the center and south of France, including Digne, the prefecture of the Basses-Alpes, and held them for several days.

But this allowed Bonaparte to portray himself as the protector of France, and many participants were sent to penal colonies in Lambesa and Cayenne, banished or less permanently exiled.

On 9 December 1943, the French armée secrète (AS) and the Francs-tireurs et partisans (FTP) attacked the construction site at the Castillon dam and seized five tonnes of explosives.

The oldest monument in the territory of the commune is the dolmen of Pierres Blanches[60] Neolithic-Chalcolithic, a registered historical site on private property.

But only the wall and the south façade date from the twelfth century; the building was half demolished during the wars of religion and rebuilt in 1590.

It was constructed in a similar manner and on the same plane as the Church of St. Andrew in the old village above the modern-day town, and was formerly the seat of a priory of the Abbey of St. Victor in Marseille.

The wooden furniture, the stalls, the pulpit and the lectern with its hexagonal base, form an interesting 18th and 19th-century set, some of which is on the historic register.

[64] The outline of the walls of Petra Castellana, the ancient city beneath the current one, is still visible, and in places they reach seven meters in height.