20141811911 Encyclopædia Britannica, Volume 16 — Largentière

LARGENTIÈRE, a town of south-eastern France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Ardèche, in the narrow valley of the Ligne, 29 m. S.W. of Privas by road. Pop. (1906) 1690. A church of the 12th, 13th and 15th centuries and the old castle of the bishops of Viviers, lords of Largentière, now used as a hospital, are the chief buildings. The town is the seat of a sub-prefect and of a tribunal of first instance; and has silk-mills, and carries on silk-spinning, wine-growing and trade in fruit and silk. It owes its name to silver-mines worked in the vicinity in the middle ages.