—Standing page
The French in these pages, glossed
Every French term the site uses, in the sense it is used here. The site is written in English; these words stay French because they are the words for the thing.
25 terms
- abattement
- The flat deduction applied to letting income before tax. The loi Le Meur cut it from 50 % to 30 % on a standard meublé de tourisme and from 71 % to 50 % on a classified one.
- abords
- The 500-metre protective radius around every classified or registered monument. Most work visible from a public road inside it requires the ABF’s approval.
- Architecte des Bâtiments de France (ABF)
- The state architect whose opinion is required for work on or near a protected building. A negative avis conforme blocks a permit outright.
- bastide
- The stone house of a planned market town in the southwest: regular, outward-facing, addressing the square rather than the field.
- borie
- A dry-stone field shelter corbelled to a point, built without mortar from the stone cleared off the ground it stands on.
- claire
- A shallow clay-bottomed pond on the Charente estuary, originally a salt pan, in which Marennes-Oléron oysters are finished before sale.
- colombage
- Half-timbered construction: a load-bearing oak or softwood frame with earth, lime or brick infill between the members.
- draille
- A drove road walked by transhumant flocks. Many are older than the départements they cross and some are now surfaced roads.
- DPE (diagnostic de performance énergétique)
- France’s energy performance certificate, lettered A to G. G-rated dwellings are barred from new short-term letting contracts from 2025, F-rated from 2028.
- épi
- The wheat-sheaf mark Gîtes de France used to grade affiliated properties from one to five, in place of hotel stars.
- etxe
- The Basque house: rendered rubble or earth walls, a steep roof and shutters painted in iron oxide, generally facing east.
- génoise
- A corbelled cornice built from layered courses of tile, carrying rainwater clear of the wall below the eaves.
- lauze
- A roofing slab of split schist, limestone or basalt, laid dry in diminishing courses at 300–500 kg per square metre.
- longère
- A Breton farmhouse one room deep, extended along its own ridge as the household grew, with granite end walls.
- mairie
- The commune’s town hall: where a registration number is issued and where building consent is decided.
- mas
- A Provençal working farm turned away from the mistral, with few openings on its north wall.
- maison de maître
- The formal, symmetrical two-storey farmhouse of the southwest, built as a statement of ownership.
- meublé de tourisme
- The legal category for a furnished short-let property, and the object of the November 2024 legislation.
- penty
- The small Breton dwelling built at the gable end of a longère, in the same stone and on the same plan.
- pigeonnier
- A dovecote tower, kept for fertiliser and for standing. Before 1789 it was a seigneurial right.
- site patrimonial remarquable (SPR)
- A designated heritage zone covering a historically coherent town or district, replacing the older secteur sauvegardé.
- taxe de séjour
- The tourist tax set by commune councils inside DGFIP bands, collected by the platforms since the 2019 Finance Act.
- tuffeau
- The soft pale calcareous limestone quarried in the Loire valley, easy to work and weathering to white-gold.
- tuile canal
- The half-round southern roof tile, laid in over-and-under pairs on a shallow pitch.
- zone de revitalisation rurale (ZRR)
- A rural area carrying tax incentives intended to slow depopulation.