Marciac

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Coordinates: 43°31′30″N 0°09′45″E / 43.525, 0.1625

Administration
Commune of Marciac
Location

Country	France
Region	Midi-Pyrénées
Department	Gers
Arrondissement	Mirande
Canton	Marciac
Intercommunality	Communauté de Communes Bastides et Vallons du Gers
Mayor	Jean-Louis Guilhaumon
Statistics
Elevation	142 m–247 m (avg. 154 m)
Land area^¹	20.60 km²
Population^² (1999)	1,169
- Density	56/km² (1999)
Miscellaneous
INSEE/Postal code	32233/ 32230
¹ French Land Register data, which excludes lakes, ponds, glaciers > 1 km² (0.386 sq mi or 247 acres) and river estuaries.
² Population sans doubles comptes: residents of multiple communes (e.g. students and military personnel) only counted once.

Marciac Jazz festival

Marciac is a small medieval bastide-town and commune in the Gers département in southwestern France. It is famous for its annual international jazz festival, which runs for a fortnight every summer.

[edit] Features

The town is characteristic of the bastides in the area - central village square with the 'mairie' (mayor's office') a main feature, with the village shops clustered along the four sides of the square. Wide arched pavements allow the comfortable dining out of doors in the summer, and the ambiance is enhanced by music piped around the square. The town boasts two beautiful steeples, both lit up at night - the one from the church and the other from the old convent (now the town hall (salle des fêtes) and cinema).

[edit] Jazz

There are 1,100 residents in the town. Most of the village youngsters attend, or have moved on from, the 'college of jazz', where jazz is taught as an ordinary school subject. The kids you can see any day of the week skating around the village square may easily be grade eight jazz students!

It is a pretty sleepy pace for most of the year, but comes totally to life in August when it hosts a massive jazz festival. A huge marquee ('le chapiteau' - seating 5,000) is erected on the rugby field and two concerts are hosted there every night for the fortnight of the festival. Smaller marquees are erected in the centre of the village square, where free concerts are given during the day, and you can sit with a beer and a snack and enjoy these under the shade. Other musical events take place around the town (eg the 'atelier de jazz').