DRAFT

House under the Pasteur parking lot

Contributor: Yichen Liu
Published: 2021-04-21
Modified: 2025-06-29

Province

Province Description

Ancient Roman colony (founded 118 BCE) and senatorial province located in modern southern France, along the Mediterranean. This province had stronger cultural and political ties to Italy than the rest of Gaul.

Location

Sublocation

House under the Pasteur parking lot

House

House under the Pasteur parking lot

Keywords

House Description

In its first phase, the house formed an L around a trapezoidal courtyard [1] (about 23 x 22 m) that was certainly developed as a garden. On the north and east it was bordered by a portico [2] with pilasters of which the foundation blocks remain. The portico (3.5 m wide) was bordered by two rectangular pools (each about 6.7 x 2.5 m) made of concrete with walls coated with cement. They drained to a collector. To the west of the courtyard is a circular well 4 meters deep lined with dressed hard limestone and without a puteal. It is not certain that it comes from Roman times.

The north wing of the house had six domestic rooms with concrete floors. The east side had the grand rooms decorated with mosaics and yielding fragments of wall painting, of marble, and of sculptural debris including a statuette and two marble hands belonging to feminine statues of life size. Further east opened a second garden [16], 10 meters wide and abutting the rampart.

Around the year 70, the house was extended to the south. In this Phase 2 form, it was the largest house as yet uncovered in the city. The excavated useful covered surface is 850 square meters, but it is estimated that the entire parcel was about 2847 square meters. It was on two levels; the new level to the south was about a meter below the original level. On its south side, the house was bordered by a domus not yet excavated, and perhaps the rampart was its northeast limit. It was accessed by a dead-end street running east-west and opening, it would seem, onto the cardo maximus. In this second phase, the house was occupied for two centuries.

Four groups of structures lay in a somewhat staggered pattern. All opened onto gardens through porticoes. The original structure on the upper terrace retained its L form with the north-south arm of the L between two gardens, [1 and 16]. The new, lower terrace was roughly square with portico-bordered gardens in the northeast [27] and southwest [17] quadrants and structures in the other two quadrants. The south garden [17], known only in part, included a rectangular pool and 3-meter wide porticoes on at least the north and east sides. The columns had finely sculptured Corinthian capitals [18]. Among the residential rooms should be noted the vast salon [23] for reception of guests. To the east, two other large rooms, [29] and [30] (12 x 7 m) on the axis of the pool were certainly also used for reception. They had a white mosaic with black framing lines and also beautiful mural paintings of high quality. Panels of cinnabar red were set off by inter-panel areas in Egyptian blue with pictures of theatrical masks hung from candelabra.

Plans

Fig.1 Plan of the House under the Pasteur parking lot, Phase 1
House under the Pasteur parking lot_phase1
Fig.2 Plan of the House under the Pasteur parking lot, Phase 2
House under the Pasteur parking lot_phase2

Bibliography

  1. R. Boiron, C. Landure, N. Nin, Les fouilles de l'Aire du Chapitre, actuel parking Pasteur, Documents d'Archéologie aixoise, 2, 1986, P. 13-36(worldcat)

  2. Maison 1996, t. II,, P. 12-15 and fiche n°4, P. 22-23 ; fiche n°5, P. 24-25

  3. J. Guyon, N. Nin, L. Rivet, S. Saulnier, Aix-en-Provence,Atlas, P. 65-68 et P.261-277.

Places

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