Altitude: 781 m
Location: in the heart of the Vicdessos valley, 7 km from the village of Niaux. Number of inhabitants: 28
Distances: Tarascon-sur-Ariège 10 km - Vicdessos 5 km
The old village of Génat conceals a number of remains and archaeological traces, starting with a dolmen located on the plateau and still partly covered by its tumulus. Nearly 200 ancient coins, funerary urns, and a bas-relief have also been discovered there. old, etc.
The village, probably grouped on its current site before the year XNUMX, was equipped with a church in the central Middle Ages, then completed in the XNUMXth century by a castle dependent on the lord of Quié.
In the valley of the brook of the grangette developed - in the XNUMXth century - the barn of the Cistercian abbey of Boulbonne (Ariège plain). From there, flocks of sheep of several thousand heads left each spring for the mountain pastures: the summer pastures.
More recently, in the nineteenth century, many mining prospecting was carried out in the territory of Génat in the hope of discovering iron to exploit mines as in Rabat. But these surveys were a failure.
Like the other villages of the Pyrenean mountains, Génat suffered the full brunt of the rural exodus from the 1850s: populated by more than 300 people in the middle of the 70th century, there were more than XNUMX people there after the Second World War and around XNUMX today.
Town hall opening hours Friday: 9 a.m. to 17:30 p.m.
Location
Ariège Pyrenees