Lyon and Provence
Abingdon had last travelled to Provence in 2017, when (tantalisingly!) we had been told that new museums (at that time shut) were just about to open. So it was with anticipation that we disembarked this time at Lyon Airport in bright sunshine. Nor were we disappointed: It was to a museum that we were first transported by Olivier our coach-driver with his uncanny ability to squeeze the coach down the slender streets of the French villages. Lyon museum with its space-pod style windows protruding from the hill-side is not universally popular among the native Lyonnaise.
Nevertheless, it contains the bronze copy of Claudius’ speech to the senate in favour of incorporating the ‘hairy Gauls’, which is quite enough to get pulse of an Ancient Historian racing; not, however, a great background for a photo of pupils – that had to wait for the beautiful chariot racing mosaic (with naufragium), or indeed any number of lovely mosaics.
A personal favourite in the museum: the remains of a fasti in Roman style but in ancient Celtic – the longest inscription anywhere in that language. We stepped out of the museum into the theatre (the first of four during the trip) and odeon, offering fine views over the roof-tops of Lyon; such beautifully-situated theatres always make me sad that the Romans chose to block off the view with a scaena.
A long coach journey down the Rhône valley to our hotel in Arles meant exhausted pupils; but the prospect of staying put for the following day in Arles was correspondingly welcome. Arles really is a great place to stay; not only is it convenient for other places to visit, but it has all the main Roman buildings you would expect in a relatively small space and so is a great place to take your first day’s tour. Our guides (one French and one British) pitched everything at the right level, and were happy to poke around in the cryptoporticus with us, as well as the more obvious remains, such as the theatre and amphitheatre. Here we were lucky enough to see the gladiators being trained up (commands in Latin!) for the ‘off-season’ fights; the summer months are given over to bull- fighting.
Our French guide exhibited the passionate oratorical style, robustly defending the Provençal version of the bull-fight (no dead bulls, like Spain) and likewise the ancient gladiator fights of the Province, which also involved no executions (I was less convinced about that one). We were regularly encouraged to consider why so many ancient buildings of the South of France remain relatively well- preserved; the reason was obvious enough – the buildings continued to be useful – and yet it was interesting to see the use change over time: for example, the Arles (and Nîmes) amphitheatre was for much of its post-Roman history full of small houses (300 of them) using the elliptical walls for defence; more recently it became a bull-ring, necessitating the addition of wooden seating and flood-lights; decried by the photographers among our group, but really a mark of the preservation of the remains.
Some were hard to please, in any case; one pupil was overheard commenting: ‘I saw a bigger one of those last year’ (indeed: the Colosseum!) Another lovely thing about Arles was siang in one of the many cafes in the Place de la Forum for lunch – danger of never resuming the tour. Nevertheless, we were off again, taking the long way round to see the Roman walls and the entry point for the aqueduct, before ending up at the museum, a triangular-shapeed building architecturally worthy of the ancient material within. Here was a candidate for the true likeness of Julius Caesar, a bust pulled recently from the Rhône; pupils remained sceptical until I pulled up a depiction on a coin, with the same wrinkles on the neck.
The French have a nice line in recreation models in their museums (This is, ader all, the country of Jean-Claude Golvin, the most amazing watercolour artist of ancient cities), and the one of the Barbegal watermills in the museum was particularly appreciated by the budding engineers in our party.
The remains of a Roman ship found in the mud of the Rhône forms an impressive centrepiece to the room. My pick is a perfectly preserved garum jar with the Latin cursive still on it, labelling it as the ‘flos’ – that’s Latin for ‘premier cru’! No garum for dinner at our hotel – standards slipping!
The morning mist rolled down the valley as we arrived as the first visitors of the day to the Pont du Gard. A passionate guide explained the extraordinary feat of leading water at a constant gradient over 50km with a drop into Nîmes of only 17m (although we discovered later in the museum that not even the Romans got it quite right first time!). We were given the opportunity to walk (at a stoop) the channel across the top, noting the thick layer of calcium carbonate deposits along the sides.
Again, the survival of the structure is due partly to the Roman engineering which has enabled it to withstand floodwaters, but also to the more recent 19th century interest in geang a steady supply for the water-hungry industry of denim manufacture (though, in the end, efforts to get the aqueduct running again were rendered pointless by instead boring into the water table under Nîmes). I
highly recommend a quick dip into the museum, which has some great video and model recreations that help to explain this extraordinary installation. The adernoon was spent in Glanum up in the Alpilles; there is nothing else quite like it among the sites on our tour; more reminiscent of Delphi or Olympia than a Roman site. Puzzling over les An/ques with their enigmatic relief sculpture was a nice way to finish the day. The lesser puzzle of the upside-down village signs was quickly solved by our courier who explained that this was an act of the farmers as part of the recent protest against removal of agricultural subsidies.
Nîmes was another full day trip, promising a good deal of walking to get between the sites; despite having similar impressive remains as Arles, there is a very different feel to Nîmes, as if Nimes celebrates its remains more, placing them in impressive squares or gardens in the case of the remains around the Nemausus spring.
In Arles it is possible to be surprised by the amphitheatre – just turn a corner and it looms up on you; not so with Nîmes, where the amphitheatre sits proudly in a spacious area surrounded by the Boulevard des Arènes. The experience within was different too, as we could get down onto the sand here and practise our Russell Crowe impressions. A stroll first to the Maison Carrée, a brilliant example of the Roman- style temple; the jazz trumpet playing ‘Mack the Knife’ in the background improved my talk on the Imperial Cult no end.
More strenuous was the walk up the Mont Cavalier to see the Tour Magne, a Roman watch-tower, which – no surprise – offered excellent views over Nîmes. We couldn’t visit Nîmes without looking both at its original watery raison d’être, the spring of Nemausus, now part of beautiful ornamental gardens, and the final destination of the water that came 50km via the Pont du Gard to Nîmes, a rather out-of-the-way castellum aquae or water distribution point (it’s more exciting than it sounds).
Other notable features of Nîmes: the ice-cream shop opposite the entry to the Maison Carrée (less Classical, but tastier), and the museum opposite the amphitheatre – another cracker – with the added bonus of a temporary exhibition on the Trojan war. Plenty of interesting material for the numismatist here (an ‘Ides of March’ denarius inter alia), along two particularly fine mythological mosaics one of Bellerophon and the Chimaera and the other of Pentheus being hacked to death. A personal highlight was the Gallo-Roman door lintel, with ‘fake’ decapitated heads in stone; it seems as if the Roman conquest put an end to the collecting of actual heads of defeated enemies, and yet the Gauls still chose to demonstrate their warrior feelings as part of the décor of their houses!
An early start on day five to enable us to venture further afield to Vaison La Romaine and Orange. At Vaison we had a super guide who really brought to life the excellent examples of Roman wealthy houses; archaeology at Vaison is alive and kicking – a Roman road had been uncovered the week before we arrived (and the rue barrée generated by this caused our coach-driver his greatest labour of coach- squeezing to date – we cursed the Romans retrospectively!)
With three theatres under our belt, we were aware, as we travelled there ader lunch, that the one in Orange was the epitome, one of only three Roman theatres in the world with the scaena still intact (hopefully the one in southern Syria remains intact). The VR experience gave a helpful sense of the original theatre, and our guide fleshed out the detail – again, some of the most interesting discussion was around why this theatre didn’t lose its scaena like many others for stone to build the surrounding the town, and why such a big theatre for a relatively small town. Aderwards we made the short journey to the triumphal arch lit up in the dusk – a magical moment to finish the day.
On the drive back up to Lyon we stopped off at Vienne to the see the Saint-Romain-en-Gal site, a prosperous merchant quarter of the city on the far bank uncovered only from 1968 onwards. As we had come to expect of France, the museum was beautifully laid out and contained some of the best artwork we had seen so far (and great recreation models too!); here there were not only mosaics (one of Lycurgus of Thrace taking up an entire room, many wild animals and the mosaic of the seasons, with squares depicting activities in the agricultural calendar), but also frescos to rival in quality those of the Palazzo Massimo.
Such was the general wealth of the area that the bath-house latrines (which must have originally comprised more than twenty individual ‘toilet-seats’) had frescos of their own depicting wresters – I think I would have gone to the loo just to see the artwork.
In summary, the south of France offers plenty of impressive Roman remains, beautiful artwork and interesting history, so long as you can drag yourself away from the cafes at lunchtime!
Hugh Price, Abingdon School 2024