LIMOGES, a town of west-central France, capital of the department of Haute-Vienne, formerly capital of the old province of Limousin, 176 m. S. by W. of Orleans on the railway to Toulouse and a junction for Poitiers, Angouleme, Perigueux and Clermont Ferrand. Pop. (1931) 83,362.
Limoges sent a large force to the defence of Alesia. In II B.C. it took the name of Augustus (Augustoritum) ; but in the 4th cen tury it was called anew by the name of the Lemovices, whose capital it was. It then contained palaces and baths, had its own senate and the right of coinage. Christianity was introduced by St. Martial. From the 5th century onwards Limoges suffered greatly through wars. Under the Merovingians Limoges was cele brated for its mints and its goldsmiths' work. In the middle ages and until 1792 the town was divided into two distinct parts, each surrounded by walls. The Château, which grew up around the tomb of St. Martial in the 9th century, and was surrounded with walls in the loth and again in the 12th, was under the jurisdiction of the viscounts of Limoges, and contained their castle and the monastery of St. Martial; the Cite, under the jurisdiction of the bishop, had but a sparse population, the habitable ground being practically covered by the cathedral, the episcopal palace and other churches and religious buildings. In the Hundred Years' War the bishops sided with the French, while the viscounts were unwilling vassals of the English. In 1370 the Cite, which had opened its gates to the French, was taken by the Black Prince and given over to fire and sword. The religious wars, pestilence and famine desolated Limoges in turn but Henri d'Aguesseau and Turgot helped it to recover. Limoges celebrates every seven years the Fete d'Ostension during which the relics of St. Martial are exposed for seven weeks, attracting large numbers of visitors. It dates from the loth century, and commemorates a pestilence believed to have been stayed by the saint.
The town, on a hill on the right bank of the Vienne, comprises two parts originally distinct, the Cite with narrow streets and old houses occupying the lower slope, and the town proper the sum mit. In the latter a street known as the Rue de la Boucherie is
occupied by a powerful and ancient corporation of butchers. Boulevards have replaced the ramparts, outside which are sub urbs with wide streets and spacious squares. The cathedral was begun in 1273, in 1327 the choir was completed, and before the middle of the 16th century the transept, with its fine north portal and the first two bays of the nave; from 1875 to 1890 the con struction of the nave was continued, and it was united with the west tower (203 ft. high), the base of which belongs to a previous Romanesque church. In the interior there is a magnificent rood loft of the Renaissance. St. Michel des Lions (14th and 15th centuries) and St. Pierre du Queyroix (12th and 13th centuries) contain interesting stained glass. An old basilica of St. Martial was pulled down after 1794. The Vienne is crossed by a railway viaduct and four bridges, two of which, the Pont St. Etienne and the Pont St. Martial, date from the 13th century. The museum includes a rich ceramic collection.
Limoges is the headquarters of the XII. army corps and the seat of a bishop, a prefect, a court of appeal and a court of assizes, and has tribunals of first instance and of commerce, a board of trade, arbitrators and a chamber of commerce. The educational institutions include a national school of decorative art. The chief industry is that of making and decorating porcelain, others are enamelling, a mediaeval industry revived at the end of the 19th century, the making of shoes and clogs and skin gloves, cloth weav ing, straw paper making and printing. The Vienne is navigable for rafts above Limoges, and the logs brought down by the current are stopped at the entrance of the town by the inhabitants of the Naveix quarter, who form a special gild for this purpose.