Gardens of the Roman Empire

House in the Rue du Palais de Justice in Vesontio

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

Location

Location Description

The defensibility offered by this unique geography made Caesar hasten to occupy Vesontio in 58 BC. The town came to have all the usual Roman structures– forum, baths, aqueduct, and amphitheater (on the other side of the Doubs, to the northwest.) But the most visible remnant is the Porte Noire (Black Gate) [3], a triumphal arch built by Marcus Aurelius at the southeastern end of the cardo maximus, today Grande Rue and still the center of city life.

Archaeology in a downtown area is always a matter of seizing opportunities as they are presented by new construction, remembering and recording what was found, and coming back years later to complete the picture. A good example of this process is at our second site, [2] on the map. In 1973, the Neptune Mosaic was discovered in rue de Lorraine, one of the largest floor decorations in all Gaul. The extent of the mosaic under nearby buildings made full excavation impossible. More than thirty years later, in 2004, construction of a gymnasium for the Collège Lumière (a middle school) gave archaeologists access to much more of the site, about 3000 square meters, for a salvage excavation. As expected, the continuation of the Neptune mosaic was found; moreover, three other mosaics of high quality, along with columns, sculpted blocks, peristyles, and monumental pools came to light. The results of this excavation have not been published; we are grateful to the excavators for sharing their preliminary results.

Garden

House in the Rue du Palais de Justice in Vesontio

Keywords

Garden Description

In 2000-2001, at the time of construction a new judiciary facility, an area of 2000 square meters was excavated at the center of this loop. The results are in large part unpublished. On land that had been occupied since the end of the second century BC, two houses of perishable materials were built in the eastern part of the site in the beginning of the first century AD. They were abandoned at the beginning of the Flavian epoch, and replaced by two imposing domus that lasted up to the middle of the third century. They stood on opposite sides of a property line wall (tinted in purple in Fig. 1) that was parallel to a cardo running in a northwest-to-southeast direction some hundred meters away. The two houses had slightly different orientations. The eastern house doubtless opened onto a southwest-northeast street passing 50 meters beyond the eastern limit of the excavation but partially brought to light in 1989-90 during excavations when a new parking facility was being built for the city hall. In this house, two independent structures (oecus) (tinted pink in the figure) with floors once decorated with mosaics since disappeared are wrapped about and connected by a portico (yellow tint) of complex plan with galleries 3 meters wide and opening onto an open space (green tint) covering 110 square meters. The counterpart of this portico is in part visible on the other side of the larger room. An incompletely known peristyle borders this oecus to the east (on the lower right edge of the plan). Its gallery was decorated with a terrazzo floor of opus signinum with accents of crustae, thin stone slices of which an opus sectile is made. In this phase, the north domus had a peristyle of 75 square meters with galleries on three sides. To the west (lower left corner of the plan), there was a large open space of nearly 500 square meters, which may have been a garden. At its west end, the wall of an incomplete building ran by a well and a masonry square 2.16 meters on a side which may have been the base of a shrine or monument. These structures were aligned with the property line wall. There was as yet no pool.

In the second half of the second century, the "garden" was restructured. The building on the west side was abandoned, the shrine or monument was kept, and a large pool put in at the eastern end supported against the wall of a terrace supporting the house to the east and consequently having the same orientation. This rectangular pool (21.2 x 3.5 m) had on the garden side a semicircular apse 6.9 meters in diameter. As part of the same architectural ensemble, a portico formed the retro-scene of the pool. Its opus signinum floor was 80 centimeters above the surface of the pool. Another, wider portico ran along the north side of the area. A shim-shaped gap existed between it and the property-line wall because of the difference in orientation. The monumental character of the pool and the north portico suggests that this garden may have been independent of both houses and was possibly a public space or belonged to a house further west, outside the limits of excavation.

At the beginning of the third century, the two domus were transformed. In particular, polychrome mosaics were installed in the east house and rooms with hypocausts in the north house. The little shrine or monument at the western end of the garden was eliminated, but the pool was reconstructed without alteration. The paving stones that had been in a pool were in part removed and used to build a 3.8 x 2.9 meter platform which served as the base, presumably, of a quadrangular fountain in the north house in an open space which replaced the peristyle, which was then destroyed.

Images

Images not available (?)

FIGURES:

Fig. 1: Houses at the Palais de Justice
Fig. 2: Axonometric representation

Dates

Beginning of the Flavian epoch - middle of the third century

Excavation Dates

2000-2001

Bibliography

C. Gaston, "Un bassin monumental et une fontaine dans les fouille du Palais de Justice de Besancon," Revue Archéologique de l'Est, t. 52, 2003, p.417-428.
Christophe Gaston: "Données récentes sur l'achitecture antique à Besançon," Archéopages/Inrap. No. 8, Nov. 2002, p. 28-35.
Laurent Vaxelaire, Philippe Barral, "Besançon: de l'oppidum à la ville romaine" in La naissance de la ville dans l'Antiquité, M. Reddé et al. ed., Paris, 2003, p. 254-256.

Places

Structures under the Collège Lumière in Vesontio

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

Location

Location Description

Garden

Structures under the Collège Lumière in Vesontio

Keywords

Garden Description

The results of the 2004 excavation at the Collège Lumière are still under study and the data are therefore still partial. This zone, close to the river and the artisinal quarter has, in the past, yielded most of the mosaics recorded for Besançon. The ancient structures discovered on 3000 square meters relate to a Gallo-Roman urbanization extending from the Augustan period to the third century and superimposed on a rather dense Gallic occupation of the first century BC. Two phases of construction from the late Augustan period up through the end of the first century, have thus far not permitted the confirmation of the possible presence of a garden. On the other, later constructions dating from the beginning and last third of the second century are rich in peristyles with open space suitable for a garden.

At the beginning of the second century, in a third phase, a structure of large dimension (at least 2500 m2) but undetermined purpose was built on fill and leveling of the abandoned earlier buildings. It will simplify descriptions to let "north" denote the direction that is actually northeast, the direction towards the river. In these terms, large rooms (the largest reaching 126 sq. m.) and corridors were bordered on the south by an open area, possibly a garden, with porticos on at least the north and west sides, and by one peristyle to the west and by another to the east. The walls of the porticos around these peristyles were decorated with painted plaster. The west peristyle (at least 22 x 20 m) is the most complete. Only one wall, the east wall of the west peristyle, is common to these second century structures and the preceding ones of first century. It may thus represent a property line. Originally, it opened over a large threshold between the largest of the rooms and the western peristyle. It was subsequently first reduced and then completely closed.

The fourth phase, a remodeling at the end of the second century, is the best preserved, but its purpose remains unclear. It has yielded a series of elements that allow us to follow the architectural reasoning of the builders. It kept the basic plan of the third state: a peristyle to the east, one to the west, and a large garden to the south. The rooms, however, are considerably rearranged. Three grand reception rooms (of 200, 85, and 65 m2 ) with floors decorated with luxurious mosaics are organized in a very regular fashion in relation to the two peristyles and garden by corridors or galleries. The floors of these numerous spaces of circulation were a terrazzo in an opus signinum matrix, except for the gallery of garden, which had a mosaic.

The largest of the rooms, decorated by the Neptune mosaic, opened on its north side through a colonnade onto the south of the east peristyle and through another colonnade on the opposite side to the garden on the south. The spacing of the columns was the same (4.6 m) on both colonnades. The excavated part of the east peristyle showed that it was 22.3 meters wide; if it was square, it would have had an area of about 500 square meters. Another large room decorated with the rinceaux mosaic (so called for the bands of scrolled foliage) also opens onto the east peristyle. The gallery that borders the garden was widened into the garden in front of the Neptune room; against the wall of this extension there was a pool at least 1.5 meters wide and probably about 13 meters long. Several paving stones of the bottom have survived. The last room, the one with the Medusa mosaic, would seem to have opened onto the garden. The garden was about .95 meters lower than the house and was reached by descending four steps. The north portico of the west peristyle was enlarged in this final phase; the interval between columns reached 6.7 meters. The presence of the closed wall that may have been a property line obliges us to ask Did this west peristyle really belong to the structure to the east or was it part of a different edifice that may have extended to the west outside the limits of the excavation?

A fragment of a little ornamental stone krater was found in the material that filled the east peristyle after its abandonment. From late antiquity is the foundation of a pool or cistern of about 3.5 by 2.5 meters. Its stones have been removed, and only the opus signinum mortar bearing the imprint of the stones has been found. This structure pierced through all the archaeological levels and into the natural earth.

Plans

Images not available (?)

Fig. 1: Plan of the domus, now under the Collège Lumière.

Dates

Gardens: Beginning and last third of second century

Excavation Dates

2004

Bibliography

C. Gaston and C. Munier "Une luxueuse domus de la find du IIe siècle à Besançon, college Lumière (Doubs, F)"" in Premières Journées archéologiques frontalières de l'Arc jurassien: Mandeure, sa campagne et ses relations d'Avenches à Luxeuil et d'Augst à Besançon. Ed, Cécile Bélet-Gonda, Presses Univ. Franche-Comté (2007), 103-112.