Barcelonnette (baʁsəlɔnɛt; Barciloneta de Provença, also Barcilona; obsolete Barcellonetta) is a commune of France and a subprefecture in the department of Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region. It is located in the southern French Alps, at the crossroads between Provence, Piedmont and the Dauphiné, and is the largest town in the Ubaye Valley. The town's inhabitants are known as Barcelonnettes.
Barcelonnette was founded and named in 1231, by Ramon Berenguer IV, Count of Provence. While the town's name is generally seen as a diminutive form of Barcelona in Catalonia, Albert Dauzat and Charles Rostaing point out an earlier attestation of the name Barcilona in Barcelonnette in around 1200, and suggest that it is derived instead from two earlier stems signifying a mountain, *bar and *cin (the latter of which is also seen in the name of Mont Cenis).
In the Vivaro-Alpine dialect of Occitan, the town is known as Barcilona de Provença or more rarely Barciloneta according to the classical norm; under the Mistralian norm it is called Barcilouna de Prouvença or Barcilouneto. In Valéian (the dialect of Occitan spoken in the Ubaye Valley), it is called Barcilouna de Prouvença or Barcilounéta. Barcino Nova is the town's Latin name meaning "new Barcelona"; Barcino was the Roman name for Barcelona in Catalonia from its foundation by Emperor Augustus in 10 BC, and it was only changed to Barcelona in the Middle Ages.
The inhabitants of the town are called Barcelonnettes, or Vilandroises in Valéian.
The Barcelonnette region was populated by Ligures from the 1st millennium BC onwards, and the arrival of the Celts several centuries later led to the formation of a mixed Celto-Ligurian people, the Vesubians. Polybius described the Vesubians as belligerent but nonetheless civilised and mercantile, and Julius Caesar praised their bravery. The work History of the Gauls also places the Vesubians in the Ubaye Valley.
Following the Roman conquest of Provence, Barcelonnette was included in a small province with modern Embrun as its capital and governed by Albanus Bassalus.