PROVINS

town, Seine-et-Marne dpartement, le-de-France rgion, north-central France. It lies east-southeast of Paris. The older part of the city, the Ville-Haute (Upper Town), stands on a hill and is partly surrounded by medieval walls (12th and 13th-century). The Upper Town is dominated by a 12th-century keep known as the Tour de Csar, built on the site of a Roman fort. The 12th-century Grange-aux-Dmes (tithe barn) houses a small museum of medieval sculpture. The Ville-Basse (Lower Town), founded in the 9th century by monks fleeing from the Normans, lies in the valley below. In the 13th century Provins was one of the most important towns in France, with a population of 80,000 inhabitants. A prosperous wool centre, its fairs were famous all over Europe. At the end of the 13th century, its privileges were abrogated, and it began to decline. The cultivation of the red rose, which was imported by a crusader, flourished at Provins; and when Edmund Crouchback, younger son of Henry III of England, was suzerain of the town in the 13th century, he made the flower the badge of the house of Lancaster. It became famous in the Wars of the Roses, the 15th-century English dynastic struggle, as opposed to the white rose of the house of York. Kaolin is mined in the vicinity. Pop. (1982) 12,005.