House of the Arsenal (Maison de l'Arsenal)
Location
Garden
Villa de Larry
Keywords
- courtyards (uncovered spaces)AAT:300004095
- porticoesAAT:300004145
- hedgesAAT:300266413
- pergolasAAT:300006783
- cisterns (plumbing components)AAT:300052558
- fountainsAAT:300006179
Garden Description
The site is on the Lorraine plateau, which has been densely occupied and cultivated since protohistoric times. The villa was on the divide between the headwaters of the Seille on the west and the Neid on the east and only 2.3 kilometers from the Roman road connecting Metz, Sarrebourg, and Strasbourg. The combination of the pars urbana and the pars rustica occupied more than 7 hectares, and the pars rustica alone had at least twelve buildings. The site of pars urbana now lies under the airport runway, so all vestiges were destroyed in the construction. The pars rustica lies outside the airport property in cultivated fields. It remains buried but intact and has been (2006- 2007) the subject of further investigation by ground-penetrating radar and other techniques not requiring excavation.
In 2003, in connection with the extension of the north runway of the Metz-Nancy-Lorraine airport, the excavation of the pars urbana within the perimeter of the airport made it possible to trace the evolution of this aristocratic villa. The site was occupied since the beginning of the first century, at first by a wooden building. At the end of the first century, the residence was still only a simple villa with a masonry portico and lateral pavilions covering, in all, about 520 square meters. Nearby were the farm buildings.
At its architectural apogee between 190 and 250, the buildings of the pars urbana enclosed about 5000 square meters. The residential habitable areas - the great rooms, the lateral pavilions, the galleries, the triclinia, the balnea major and minor, the bedrooms and service areas were arranged around the central courtyard and garden areas. The buildings covered a total of more than 1.3 hectares. The rest, more than two-thirds of the pars urbana, were courtyards and gardens.
For ease of description, we will assume that the top of the plan (Fig. 1) is the north side, though in fact it is the northwest side. In these terms, the north side of the central courtyard was open for just over half its length onto a 90-meter-long courtyard or garden along the north side of the pars urbana. This court was bordered on the north by a closed gallery which marked the separation from the pars rustica. In the southeast corner of this large court, in an area of 92 square meters (shaded green and marked with a V and a 1 in Fig. 1, there were discovered definite traces of a pleasure garden, namely, planting trenches and pits for a hedge or row of bushes which marked its limits (Fig. 2). The planting trenches were preserved to a depth of 5 to 15 centimeters. The soil in them was a gray sandy silt, while surrounding soil was the geological clay of the area. The row of bushes was placed parallel to the large, heated reception room just to the south. Detail and a possible hypothetical reconstruction of the layout of this garden are shown in Fig. 3. Moreover, traces of five pairs of post holes in the soil were discovered east of the inner façade of the entry porch and in alignment with it. They may be related to a pergola (8.4 x 2 m) (Fig. 1 and detail in Fig. 4).
Two walkways, now much despoiled of their stones, formed a T (indicated by dotted lines in Fig. 1) and connected this entry porch to the two lateral pavilions which framed the forecourt. Likewise, a large court bordered the western part of the west wing and northwest pavilion. It was enclosed by a wall on the south and west defining an area of 3265 square meters. Erosion of the ancient surface of the soil, however, destroyed any other horticultural traces. In all, the three large courtyards, enclosed or bordered by residential buildings covered 7,100 square meters.
In the eastern part of the pars urbana, an intermediary enclosed space (shaded green and marked with a V and a 3 in Fig. 1) between the northeast pavilion and the gallery of the balneum, was occupied by a garden with a surface of 196 square meters, where two trees were planted in the center. A second interior court (shaded green and marked with a V and a 4 in Fig.1), occupied 504 square meters in the southeast corner of the villa between the southern apartments and the balneum. A deep subterranean structure about five or six meters in diameter may have been a cistern or pool. These two interior gardens related to the baths covered 700 square meters. Finally, the bottom of a horticultural pot was discovered under the porch of the south facade of the villa.
Traces of wooden pipes with iron hoops were discovered running underground across the large central courtyard and to the south of the pars urbana to bring water from capped springs to the central pool, to the baths, and almost certainly to fountains that were not found. A corresponding network of drains and sewers was also found. Just east of the entry porch was a canal for draining off the rainwater from the roof of the entry porch.
In the fourth century, the villa was in large part ruined; the pools were filled in, the courtyards in the center and to the north occupied by wooden structures erected from the end of the fourth century to the sixth century.
The Villa de Larry site is an example of the villa of a country estate where the gardens integrated the architecture of the buildings. The art of gardening bore witness to the will of the builders and proprietors to master nature and the plant world, imposing on them harmonious and regular forms with plans inspired by the imperial prototypes of Rome.
Maps
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Plans
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Images
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Dates
Unspecified
Bibliography
- J.-D. Laffite, A. Bressoud, M. Mondy, A. Lefèbvre, M. Feller, I. Dechanez-Clerc, J.-J. Bigot, É. Rouger, LIÉHON (Moselle) « Larry » - Aéroport Metz-Nancy Lorraine, rapport de fouille préventive 2003, INRAP GEN/ SRA DRAC Lorraine, Metz, 2005, 9 vol., 1378 p., 207 figures, 61 plates. (worldcat)