Most Recent Visit: June 2018. One of the great things about having a private vehicle is being able to visit some of the smaller sites that are often in rural areas with limited or no public transportation options. As with some of the other sites in Gallia Narbonensis, I’ve grouped some of these smaller sites…
Read More
Most Recent Visit: June 2018 The forerunner to the current second largest city in France, Marseille, was the important ancient city of Massalia. Massalia was the oldest Greek colony in Gaul, founded in 600 BCE by Greeks from Phocaea. According to Thucydides, this was opposed by the Carthaginians, who were subsequently defeated in a naval…
Read More
Most Recent Visit: June 2018 As has been discussed in previous posts, there are a number of sites that would be categorized as miscellaneous; not associated with any major site that would warrant a full post to itself, but also very much worth visiting. A number of these sites spring up along the path of…
Read More
Continued From Arelate Part I A bit north of the Place du Forum, at about 13 Rue du Sauvage, are the remains of a basilica incorporated into the façade of the Hôtel d’Arlatan. A sign on the building on the west side of Rue du Sauvage marks the spot. Some of the stonework in the…
Read More
Most Recent Visit: June 2018. The Roman town of Arelate (modern Arles) seems to have begun life as a Greek settlement known as Theline, sometime in the 6th century BCE. In 535 BCE, the settlement was captured by the Saluvii and renamed Arelate, a Gallic language reference to the settlement’s proximity to a marsh. The…
Read More
Most Recent Visit: June 2018 Many of the sites I visited in my trip through the south of France either weren’t associated with any major or extensively conserved site or were the only remains of a significant urban area. As such, many didn’t warrant their own post, so as I did with the miscellaneous sites…
Read More
Most Recent Visit: June 2018 Not far from the confluence of the Rhône and L’Aigue rivers is the French town of Orange, which boasts perhaps two of the most well-known Roman monuments in France; the UNESCO World Heritage Sites of the Théâtre Antique d’Orange and the Arc de Triomphe d’Orange. Located in the territory of…
Read More
Continued From Vasio Vocontiorum Part I Puymin La Villasse is exited through the same way it is entered, and the entrance to Puymin is just directly across the road where the ticket is purchased. Immediately inside the park is another large residence, the Maison de l’Apollon Lauré (House of the Laurelled Apollo), sometimes referred to…
Read More
Most Recent Visit: June 2018. The town of Vaison-La-Romaine, situated along the Ouvèze River in the French department of Vaucluse, owes more than just its modern name to the Roman past. In the Roman period, the settlement was called Vasio Vocontiorum (possibly fully Vasio Julia Vocontiorum), which provides the origin of the modern town’s name,…
Read More
Most Recent Visit: June 2018. Valentia In antiquity, the French city of Valence was preceded by the Roman settlement of Valentia. Valentia was located at the second most important crossroads in the region, behind Lugdunum, where the Via Agrippa running between Lugdunum and Arelate intersected with a road running to the east toward Italy via…
Read More