Confolens is the administrative center of a largely rural district, which has seen the development of tourism in recent years.

It still has picturesque remnants of its medieval past, including city walls and several houses dating from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries.

[4] In the nineteenth century, Confolens developed itself as the administrative center for a considerable agriculture area, due to its role as sous-prefecture and the distance of all other major towns Angoulême (to the south-west),[4] Limoges and Poitiers are all about 70 kilometres away.

It has several handsome nineteenth century administrative buildings, some of which were built by Paul Abadie, who was very active in the region.

One of the most prominent people to have hailed from Confolens is Émile Roux, a physician and immunologist who was a close collaborator of Louis Pasteur.