the 18th century, when the nearby town Villefranche-de-Rouergue was made the seat of the experimental Provincial Estates of the Haute-Guyenne. However, with the French Revolution Rodez became the chef-lieu of the newly created department of the Aveyron and has remained so since. Prehistory Antiquity Rodez is a city of more than two millennia: its existence dates back to the 5th century BC, when a Celtic tribe of Central Europe, the Ruteni, stopped in the south of Auvergne to found one of these characteristic oppida of the Gallic civilization, that of . Many elements of heritage bear witness to the Romanisation of Segodunum. While Christianity spread in the wake of the evangelising activity of , the city witnessed and at times suffered during, the less stable times that following the fall of the Roman Empire. Middle Ages Rodez was successively occupied by the Visigoths, the Franks, the armies of the Dukes of Aquitaine and the Counts of Toulouse, as well as by the Moors, who seized Rodez in 725, and damaged the ancient church. Years later, it was the English who captured Rodez, during the Hundred Years' War. The history of the city remained marked for a long time by an intense rivalry between the Counts of Rodez, who dominated the town extra-muros, and the , who dominated intra-muros. A wall separated the two sectors. Each community had a town hall, its consuls, and its own administration; each competing for power. To the town, the famous dynasty of the Counts of Armagnac and Rodez, eventually acquired sovereign privileges: Coining money at the Martelenque Tower, wearing the crown and persisting to recognise the antipope Benedict XIII and his heirs Bernard Garnier and Jean Carrier, for a time. This led inevitably to confrontation with the King of France in 1443. The dauphin, the future Louis XI, came to occupy Rodez and submit Count Jean IV. Later his son would have a seditious idea, trying to betray Louis XI. This caused him to be killed in Lectoure, with his family, during his escape. Early Modern era At the beginning of the 16th century, Rodez was marked by Bishop (from one of the most famous families of Rouergue). He finished the work of construction of the Cathedral of Our Lady of Rodez. He added the architectural masterpiece that is the bell tower, at , topped by a Virgin, yet today the highest bell tower, without