ROMANS  , a

town of south-eastern France, in the department of DrOme, 121 M . N.E. of Valence on the railway to Grenoble . Pop . (1906) town, 13,304; Commune, 17,622 . Romans stands on an eminence on the right bank of the Isere, a fine stone bridge uniting it with Bourg-de-Peage (pop . 4668) on the other side of the river . Both towns owe their prosperity to their situation in the most fertile part of the valley of the Isere . The present parish church belonged to an abbey founded in 837 by St Bernard, bishop of Vienne . The principal portal is a fine specimen of 12th-century Romanesque, and the lower part of the nave is of the same period; the choir and the transept are striking examples of the style of the 13th century . Romans has a tribunal of commerce and a communal college . Its industries include tanning, leather-dressing and shoe-making, silk-spinning, hat-making, absinthe-distilling and oil-refining . There is trade in walnuts, walnut-oil, silk, cattle, &c .