Déols () is a commune in the department of Indre, region of Centre-Val de Loire, central France. Déols is an ancient town with a famous Benedictine abbey, Abbaye Notre-Dame-du-Bourg-Dieu. Today it is somewhat overshadowed by the nearby city of Châteauroux, which faces it across the river Indre. It preserves a fine Romanesque tower and other remains of the abbey church, once the most important in the duchy of Berry. History Toponyms revealing the presence of former Neolithic dolmens (Grandes and Petites Pierres Folles), near the resurgent springs of the Montet into the river Indre, above which a Gaulish village of the Bituriges was later established, then a nearby Gallo-Roman fanum, confirm the age of Vicus Dolensis or Dolus. The village was moved westward by the Romans next to the antique ford and later bridge built over the river Indre on the road from Paris to Toulouse. In 469 or 470 the Visigoths of Euric defeated the army of the Briton king Riothamus at the battle of Déols, the victory carrying with it the supremacy over the district of Berry and initiating the Visigothic threat over the last years of the Roman empire. But it was only during the Middle Ages that, through the pilgrimage to the tomb of Saint Ludre and his father Saint Léocade in the crypts of the parish church of St Stephen built upon their graves, later one of the steps on the route from Paris to Santiago de Compostela, then through the lords of Déols and Châteauroux, that Déols acquired its significance. The Benedictine abbey of Our Lady of Déols was founded in 917 by Ebbes the Noble, prince of Déols. He gave his palace, originally the villa of Saint Ludre according to legend, to the monks in order to build a monastery and transferred his residence to Châteauroux, where the monks of Saint-Gildas-de-Rhuys in Brittany took as well refuge from Norman raids from 920 to 1008 with the relics of Saint Gildas, and founded another abbey under his vocable. The name of the new town comes from Château Raoul, the castle overlooking the river Indre built about west by Raoul, son of Ebbes, rebuilt in the 15th c. and later seat of the Préfet, then departemental assembly. For centuries this change did not affect the prosperity of the place of Déols, which was maintained by the prestige of its abbey. The abbey was rebuilt about