The town-hall of St. Antonin (Tarn et Garonne) is perhaps the only surviving one of the period. With the exception of the belfry, it is an almost perfect type of the architecture of this class in the thirteenth century, to which date it may probably be assigned (Fig. 200). The little town of St. Antonin, which had obtained its communal charter in 1136, suffered much for its fidelity to Raymond VI., Count of Toulouse. During the war of the Albigenses it was twice taken by Simon de Montfort, whose son, Guy de Montfort, sold it to St. Louis in 1226. It was at this period, no doubt, that the present building was erected. It has the characteristic feature of the civic monument, the _belfry_, which, in the Middle Ages, was the architectural expression of municipal authority and jurisdiction. The building is a simple rectangular structure, over which the square tower rises to the right. The ground-floor is a market, communicating with an adjoining market-place, and with the narrow street which passes under the belfry. The _grande salle_ or municipal hall occupies the first story, together with a smaller apartment in the tower. The second story is divided in the same manner. [Illustration: 223. TOWN-HALL AT LOUVAIN (BELGIUM)] We have already called attention to the far-reaching influence of French art as manifested in religious architecture so early as the close of the twelfth century. Such influences were no less paramount in developments of civil architecture, and we find municipal buildings of the fourteenth century in Italy--at Pienza and other towns--in which not only analogies but points of identity with the thirteenth-century example of St. Antonin are distinctly traceable. The municipal buildings of the North, the most perfect types of which are those of Germany and Belgium, are nearly uniform in plan. A belfry rises from the centre of the façade, flanked right and left on the first story by the great civic halls. The ground-floor is a market for the sale of merchandise. The cloth-hall of Ypres (so named since the construction of a new town-hall in the seventeenth century) is one of the most beautiful of such examples. The building was begun in 1202, but was not completed till 1304. The façade measures 440 feet in length, and has a double row of pointed windows. It terminates at each angle in a very graceful pinnacle, and the centre is marked by a noble square belfry of vast size, the oldest portion of the building, the foundation-stone of which was laid by Baldwin IX. of Flanders in 1200. The belfry of Bruges, which was begun at the close of the thirteenth century, and completed some hundred years later, is another most interesting example of the civic buildings of its period. The structure consists of a market and the usual municipal halls, crowned by the lofty belfry, the original height of which was 350 feet. [Illustration: 224. BELFRY OF TOURNAI (BELGIUM)] [Illustration: 225. BELFRY OF GHENT (BELGIUM)]