Aude (Department, France)

Last modified: 2022-03-02 by ivan sache
Keywords: aude |
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Flag of the Departmental Council of Aude - Image by Ivan Sache, 12 July 2015

• Administrative data
• Flag of the Departmental Council
• Flag of the former General Council
• Municipalities
  • Carcassonne
  • Narbonne
• Intermunicipal authorities
• Yacht clubs

See also:

• France
• France: Metropolitan departments
• Clickable map of France (departments)

Administrative data

Code: 11
Region: Occitanie (Languedoc-Roussillon until 2014)
Traditional provinces: Languedoc, Comté de Foix
Bordering departments: Ariège, Haute-Garonne, Hérault, Pyrénées-Orientales, Tarn

Area: 6,139 km²
Population (2016): 368,025 inhabitants

Préfecture: Carcassonne
Sous-préfectures: Limoux, Narbonne
Subdivisions: 3 arrondissements, 19 cantons, 436 municipalities.

The department is named after river Aude (220 km), a tributary to the Mediterranean Sea.

Ivan Sache, 11 April 2019

Flag of the Departmental Council

The flag hoisted in front of the Departmental Council (website) in Carcassonne was changed to reflect the change in the emblem of the Departmental Council. The change in the name of the local assembly from General Council to Departmental Council, prescribed by the 2015 reform made the emblem obsolete.
The updated emblem kept the design of the former one, swapping the orange and blue colours - which makes the yellow Cross of Toulouse on the orange background hardly visible, and shifting the writing "Aude / Le département", now in white letters, on a blue rectangle placed right of the "A" symbol.
The updated flag (photo, La Dépêche du Midi, 21 April 2015) is white with a square emblem derived from the official emblem, the "A" being placed on a plain orange background and the blue rectangle with the white lettering being placed beneath the orange panel.

The stand-alone emblem of the department is horizontally elongated, with the writing placed on a blue background right of the "A". The emblem used on the flag is prescribed in case of "very limited or vertical space".
The colours are prescribed as follows:

              CMYK        Pantone       RGB
Yellow	  0  40  70   5	   7509 C   219 163  92
Orange	  0  60 100  10	    145 C   197 116  25
Blue	100  40   0   0	   3005 C     4 116 186

Syncopate was designed in 2010 by the Astigmatic One Eye Typographic Institute / Brian J. Bonislawsky (website) as a headline and display typeface.
Light in weight with a wide body width, it is a unicase design where the traditional lowercase x-height has been abandoned and a single uppercase height rules the design of all of the alpha and numeric glyphs. Some uppercase glyphs are copied to their lowercase slots, where other lowercase glyphs such as the a, e, and r, are scaled up to uppercase heights. This motif allows for a vast array of setting possibilities.
Though intended for display, Syncopate does work well for limited text runs. The letter forms are a modern and stylish sans serif inspired by the many trendy sans serif typefaces that are so prevalent today. The lighter weight and wide body impart a certain level of elegance, while the unicase approach keeps the look lively and fresh.
[Font Squirrel]

Ivan Sache, 22 April 2017

Flag of the former General Council

Flag of the former General Council of Aude, two versions - Images by Ivan Sache, 24 September 2009, and Olivier Touzeau, 19 February 2019, respectively

The flag of the former General Council of Aude, hoisted in front of the building of the General Council (Carcassonne), was white with the logo of the General Council, "CONSEIL GENERAL" being either omitted (photo) or present (photo, 2010; photo, 2014).

The logo of the General Council of Aude was vertically divided blue- orange (c. 1:2) with a white "A" in the middle and an orange, filled Cross of Toulouse in canton. "AUDE" is written in black letters below.
The Cross of Toulouse recalls that the current territory of Aude, especially its southern part, was a Cathar stronghold during the Albigensian Crusade and the place of the "Castles' War". Among the "Cathar Castles" located today in Aude - mostly ruined - are Puivert and Termes, seized in 1210, Peyrepertuse, seized in 1240, and Quéribus, the last Cathar fortress, seized in 1255. The last known Cathar "parfait" (~ saint), Guilhem Bélibaste, was burned at the stake in Villerouge-Termenès in 1321.

Pascal Vagnat, Ivan Sache & Olivier Touzeau, 19 February 2019