In later times, when Provence and a great part of the Riviera had passed into the kingdom of France, its period of vigour and independence had faded away, and its architecture only presents a picture of the various foreign influences under which it lay. This is seen in the examples of the flamboyant work of the French, and in the Italian Gothic introduced by the Genoese, who were long masters of the Riviera. All other architecture, however, soon yielded to the revival of the classic style, which here, amongst so many Roman relics, found a congenial soil. The great development of Gothic architecture in the North was not limited to churches and other ecclesiastical structures, but extended to every species of building. For it is one of the leading characteristics of Gothic, that it is available for every variety of architectural requirement. It is a free and natural style, not subject to the arbitrary rules of monastic or academic systems, but ready to apply itself in the simplest and most direct manner to all human wants in the way of building. The Gothic lay architects therefore naturally directed their skill to the proper development of Domestic and Castellated Architecture, as well as Ecclesiastical and Monastic. Of the former, many most interesting examples are to be seen in the Southern towns; and of the castellated architecture, we shall meet with not only such splendid examples as the Pope’s Palace at Avignon, and the great castles of Villeneuve and Beaucaire; but we shall also have an opportunity of examining, at Carcassonne and Aigues Mortes, the towns which possess probably the completest and best preserved specimens, now extant, of the military architecture of the Middle Ages.