Arausio on Gardens of the Roman Empire

House Cours Pouroules

Wed, 21 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

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 Cours Pouroules

House

House Cours Pourtoules

House Description

In 1984-86, prior to construction of a parking garage, a large area of some 4,700 square meters was excavated south of the Cours Pourtoules. About a third of the ancient structures were reinforced and reburied; the rest was destroyed. The area encompassed several ancient houses; the one of interest to us is in the west insula.

Keywords

Garden Description

The garden to the south is not completely known. The north gallery (BG), 5.5 meters wide at its widest point, was paved with black-and-white mosaics for at least 35 meters. At the west was a gallery (17 x 3.5 m) with a floor of pounded earth. One side was perhaps with a full wall pierced by windows. In the southwest corner of the garden was a well (FS) for which a half *dolium, found destroyed in the well, served as a puteal. The soil of the garden is brown clay with strata of sand. Analysis of this soil has not been able to identify traces of what was planted in it. The garden was probably put in during Augustan times, but the paucity of ceramic material that could support this date must be underlined.

In phase IIIA, the large room H was divided by columns into a central nave and aisles along the sides, where pilasters along the walls matched the columns. The central nave was paved with a new mosaic while the aisles kept a floor of opus signinum. The gallery [BG] kept the same floor as before. A long rectangular pool [BF] was installed along this gallery without touching it. Somewhat surprisingly, it was not centered either between the galleries of on the reception room [H].

In phase IIIB, in the second quarter of the second century, the east and west galleries of the garden were paralleled on the outside by two new open walks elevated some 40 centimeters above the level of the garden. To the south was added a structure to close in the garden. The well disappeared in this phase. In the area [CB] was installed a shallow pool suggestive of a foot bath. It was fed by a fountain roughly in the area [CI], but too badly damaged for precise description. Two little channels in the rim separating the two pools let the water flow between them. Fragments of a luxurious opus sectile which ornamented this arrangement were collected. Stairs at the northwest corner of the pool [BF] allowed one to get in and out of the pool. The smooth-shaft Corinthian columns of gallery [BG] were moved to be perpendicular to those of [FK]. Their regular spacing was interrupted in front of the large room [H] to leave open the view of the garden.

Among the objects found at Cours Pourtoules was a terracotta oscillum representing a theatrical mask. The site was abandoned at the end of the second or beginning of the third century.

Plans

General map of Cours Pourtoules

Phase 1 of Course Pourtoules

Phase 2 of Course Pourtoules

Phase 3 of Course Pourtoules

Cours Pourtoules, axonometric reconstruction

Credit: by P. Vallauri. from Gallia 87-88, fig. 133 p. 322.

Images

House Cours Pouroules

Bibliography

"Orange, Cours Pourtoules", Informations archéologiques in Gallia 87-88, P. 321-26
Bellet, Michel-Edouard. Orange Antique: Monuments Et Musée. Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1991, P. 70-71 (worldcat)
J.-D. Bouche, Orange, Cours Pourtoule, ilôt Ouest. Présentation des données de fouilles de l'état I et II 15-10 av. J.-C. à 40 ap. J.-C. mémoire de DEA Université d'Aix-en-Provence, dir. X. Lafon, 2003 (à verifier EM)

Places

Quarter of Saint-Florent - House A1, House of Clodius

Wed, 21 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Province

Province Description

Location

Sublocation

Quarter of Saint-Florent – House A1, House of Clodius

House

Quarter of Saint-Florent – House A1, House of Clodius

Keywords

House Description

House A1, called the House of Clodius, is bordered on the north by a secondary decumanus and has a common wall with other houses on three sides. It seems to have occupied an area of a little more than 450 square meters, but exploration is incomplete on the northeast because of the limits imposed on the excavation. The edifice reached us in very bad condition with many of the stones of its walls carried off. It was built in the Augustan period, somewhere between 10 B.C. and 10 A.D. and was destroyed in 20-30 A.D., perhaps in a flood that struck the town in about 30, as in the quarter of the Cours Pourtoules. In one of the rooms, an inscription in tesserae reads CLODIVS, perhaps gives the name of the proprietor.

The house has an L shape. The rooms were along the north and east side of a rectangular courtyard of nearly 120 square meters; its purpose may have been utility or pleasure. The northern wing was divided relatively symmetrically with a series of residential rooms of large dimensions. This wing was dominated by a large reception room in plan like an up-side-down T (when viewed from the courtyard), which probably served as the triclinium. The rectangle which bounded the T was flanked by two smaller rectangular rooms which, to judge by the two-part mosaic on the floor, would seem to have been cubicula -- bedrooms. (The bed went over the rather plain mosaic, while the elaborate one was free to be enjoyed.)

The presumed triclinium opened through a wide entrance, flanked on either side by a column or pilaster (of which only the bases were found), onto a portico with a colonnade. The space between the columns widened at this point to give an uninterrupted view of the courtyard from the triclinium, a detail which would seem to support the interpretation of the courtyard as a garden.

Plans

Plan of Quarter of Saint-Florent – House A1, House of Clodius

Dates

B.C 10-A.D 10 Built A.D 20-30 Destroyed

Bibliography

Bellet, Michel-Edouard. Orange Antique: Monuments Et Musée. Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1991, P. 229-239 (worldcat)

Places

Quarter of Saint-Florent, House A - House of the Mosaic with Meanders

Wed, 21 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Province

Province Description

Location

Sublocation

Quarter of Saint-Florent, House A – House of the Mosaic with Meanders

House

Quarter of Saint-Florent, House A – House of the Mosaic with Meanders

Keywords

House Description

Some years after the destruction by flood of the house of Clodius (NAR15.10), and its neighbor (House A2), their ruins were leveled and this house built upon them. Some authorities place the construction in the last third of the first century, around the year 70; others, sometime in the second century. The dwelling seems to have lasted until about 260-280.

Garden Description

The garden was in the square peristyle (9.7 m on a side) with six Corinthian columns on a side. (The east corner has not be found, but can be confidently conjectured, along with the fourth gallery.) The reception room [a] (of nearly 50 sq. m.) was ornamented with a black and white mosaics with meanders of alternating swastikas and squares, filled in with floral motifs, chalices and hederae (ivy). Slightly off-center relative to the garden, it opens through a large bay onto the north gallery of the peristyle, which also has a mosaic. This northern gallery was of the Rhodian type to open a larger view from the main room onto the garden. Just inside the peristyle, a gutter of cut stone caught rainwater from the roofs of the porticoes. A rectangular pool (7.4 x 2.5 m. and less than 70 or 80 cm. deep) running the full length of the north side of the garden occupied more than a third of its space. It was lined in opus signinum and had masonry quarterround in the edges to make them watertight. It was incompletely excavated on the south side and could well have had there a semicircular apse as in the neighboring House with the Polychrome Mosaic. Probably it had a well, as in other parts of Orange, but none has been located. Lying in the pool was found a collection of fragments of lead piping. Presumably, they had been pulled together after the house was abandoned with the intent to reuse them. These pieces permit the conjectural partial reconstruction of the water supply to the pool. The water came, it seems, in a pipe of average diameter, to the northeast corner of the pool, then passed through a truncated cone and came out through a curved section of smaller diameter. The purpose would seem to be to create the pressure necessary for a water jet in a fountain. A rather large sewer collector (30 x 40 cm in section) took the rainwater of the roofs and the overflow of the pool from the northeast corner of the garden and led them away to the north, picking up along the way the waste water of the baths. The overflow from the pool may perhaps have assured the necessary flux in latrines near the baths.

Plans

Plan of Quarter of Saint-Florent, House A – House of the Mosaic with Meanders

Dates

B.C 10-A.D 10 Built A.D 20-30 Destroyed

Bibliography

Bellet, Michel-Edouard. Orange Antique: Monuments Et Musée. Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1991, P. 69 (worldcat)
Maison 1996, t. II, P. 229-237 and P. 240-242.

Places

Saint-Florent, House B, House with the Polychrome Mosaic

Wed, 21 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Province

Province Description

Location

Sublocation

Saint-Florent, House B, House with the Polychrome Mosaic

House

Saint-Florent, House B, House with the Polychrome Mosaic

Keywords

House Description

It was of high quality construction with eight black and white floor mosaics with occasional touches of color, columns and capitals in dressed stone, painted plaster, and a heated room. It was arranged in a U around a garden surrounded by a square peristyle 13.5 meters on a side. The principal room was in the center on the north side, looking south across a portico to the garden. The peristyle had eight columns on each side except the north, where the central two were missing to open the view of the garden from the main room. To judge by the foundations, the columns on either side of this opening were larger than the others. A rectangular pool (4.9 x 2.1 m.) on the garden side of this opening had a semicircular apse on its south side. It was probably about seventy or eighty centimeters deep; but the depth is uncertain, for the top has not been preserved. It was lined with opus signinum and had masonry quarterround to make the edges watertight. Around the garden, except at the pool, ran a gutter in dressed stone.

Plans

Plan of Saint-Florent, House B, House with the Polychrome Mosaic

Bibliography

Bellet, Michel-Edouard. Orange Antique: Monuments Et Musée. Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1991, P. 70-71 (worldcat)
Maison 1996, t. II, P. 229-237 and P. 248-250.

Places

Suburban Villa de la Brunette

Wed, 21 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Province

Province Description

Location

Sublocation

Suburban Villa de la Brunette

House

Suburban Villa de la Brunette

Keywords

House Description

To the west of Orange, this residence is just south of the amphitheater – which was destroyed in the eighteenth century. More than 2000 square meters have been unearthed. It is bounded on the south by a fencing wall 150 meters long and on the north by road that separates the house from the amphitheater. The east and west boundaries are not known. Constructed in the first century A.D. (condition 1), the habitation was greatly remodeled and embellished towards the end of the second century (condition 2) only to be abandoned in the first half of the third century.

Garden Description

Condition 1: The central building is organized around an atrium which opens to the east on the garden through a 2.9-meter wide portico [3]. This portico extends all along the east side of the building and forms a transition between the rooms of the house and the garden. On the north, it opens onto the rooms [4] to [7]. Room [7] is the most spacious of the residential part. The garden [30] unfolds to the east of the villa. Its full surface is unknown, since its limits to the north and to the east are unknown. The form of the plantings has not been ascertained. In the garden, 15 meters from the portico [3], was a rectangular pool [31] 13.35 meters long, more than 3.5 meters wide (to the limit of the excavation) and more than a meter deep. It is covered with a layer of tile with waterproofing strips in the corners. Around the pool, the ground was covered with pebbles.

Condition 2: Towards the end of the second century, new constructions radically transformed the suburban villa. It was enlarged to the south, and was henceforth organized around an east-west axis of symmetry, that is to say, determined by the two courtyards with portico's [23] and [27]. The first room, [23], is square (7 by 7 meters). Situated at the west of the building, it leads into several large rooms; the central part {of what?} doubtless had a stone floor. The large room [27] is between one courtyard [23] and the second courtyard [7], (7.20 by 11.50 meters), separated from the garden [46] by the portico [3]. This courtyard {first or second?} was certainly planted, for the soil is arable earth. It is surrounded by a U-shaped gallery with columns 2.50 meters apart and crowned with Corinthian capitals. A gutter at the foot of the portico collected rainwater. There was no passage towards the center. {What center???} Outside the axial room [25], two other reception rooms opened directly onto the courtyard: the rectangular room [29] and the room with the trilobe plan [31]. A fourth reception room [30], further back, opened into the southwest corner of the gallery.

In comparison to the previous phase, the garden [46] has been considerably enlarged; its southern limit has been pushed back about 40 meters. The portico which ran along the west side [3] has been lengthened up to the wall delimiting the villa on the south. It returns towards the east by a wider gallery [44]. The two galleries meet in a circular room 8 meters in diameter [45] of which only the foundations remain. The elevation could have been a curved wall pierced with bays or a colonnade.

At the heart of the garden, the rectangular pool [47] of the first condition was kept. Along the gallery [3], a semi-circular pool [48] with an internal diameter of six meters was added. It is separated from the gallery by an elongated.

Plans

Fig. 1 Plan of Suburban Villa de la Brunette

Fig. 2 Plan of Suburban Villa de la Brunette

Dates

A.D. 1-100 constructed

Bibliography

J.-M. Mignon, I. Doray, V. Faure, A. Bouet, La Brunette à Orange premier établissement antique périurbain (Vaucluse), in R.A.N., 30, 1997, P.173-202.