Work has begun on France’s first "Alzheimer's village” where patients will be given free rein without medication in a purpose-built medieval-style citadel designed to increase their freedom and reduce anxiety.

Residents of the village in Dax, southwestern France, will be able to shop in a small supermarket, go to the hairdressers, local brasserie, library, gym and even a little farm.

They will live in small shared houses designed to reflect their personal tastes and in four districts reminiscent of the southwestern French region between forests and the seashore.

While it may sound similar to a typical residential complex, the inhabitants are all men and women suffering from Alzheimer’s, the commonest cause of dementia. It is an irreversible, progressive brain disorder that slowly destroys memory and thinking skills and, eventually, the ability to carry out the simplest tasks.

Allowing them to live in an almost normal village helps “maintain (patients’) participation in social life,” said professor Jean-François Dartigues, neurologist at the Pellegrin university hospital in Bordeaux.

“The brain is the organ of human relations par excellence," he said.