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Augustodunum: the glory days of Autun

To begin with Roman Autun (Augustodunum), you might best start outside it, at the mammoth, hugely impressive “temple of Janus”. The scare quotes are there because the name arose from the 17th-century misunderstanding – the name of the plant dominating in the field around it sounding a bit like the two-faced deity. One guess suggests Mars (since his temples were often outside the entrances to towns), but it doesn’t get any more informed than that.

What is certain is its impressiveness – standing to its original 24m on one side – even though the structure itself was a ruin from 269 and the attack of Victorinus. By the start of the 17th-century it looked like it does today – although night lighting has recently been added for a romantic touch.

The original form, a central temple surrounded by a wooden arcade, is Gaulish – possibly this was an early structure as Augustodonum took over from Bibracte as the local capital. A major religious ceremony would have seen the main statue of the god, housed usually in the inner cella, carried in procession around the arcade.

Now’s a good time to imagine the beginnings of this planned town. Augustus decided to move the capital of Gaul from nearby Bibracte, and choose this site for its convenient location at the natural confluence of the Seine, Saone and Rhone trade routes. There was probably also already a road, predating the Romans. For all of this trade the site of Autun, on a small hill beside the river, was far more convenient than the hill fort, with its steep location.

Around the temple of Janus, a guide suggested on the Days of Patrimony this month, may have been the site of the original Gaulish town, but it is still regularly flooded, burying remains, and since no new structures are being built here, so the rescue archaeology that results in most new discoveries is not being conducted.

Augustus began the town – and planned it carefully. The slopes of the hill were terraced (those very terraces still being the foundations of many still-standing buildings, then the ramparts constructed. These were not really, our guide suggested, for defense, but rather to impress and awe.

Nearby – follow the signs for walking to Porte d’Arroux – you could have entered the town, through a large extant gateway. The story has it that its form helped to inspire the 12th-century cathedral architect, with fake triple arches over his gallery.

There’s also the St Andre – much restored, and it’s atmosphere rather ruined by busy roads and its view of a modern supermarket – better pass quickly over that one.

(Elsewhere, one of the towers of the St Androche gate also survives – although isn’t usually visible to the public – I’ve written about that elsewhere.)

But nearby is by far the grandest Roman site in Autun is the theatre, equal to the largest known in the Roman world (matching Rome and Pompei), seating 20,000 – it is still a mammoth venue, even though the top tier of seats has been lost (it’ss shape now marked out at the top of the natural slope by linden trees. The bottom (post) tier of seats sat on the natural slope, the two (middle class) was raised on tunnel vaults.

For the loss of much of it you can blame the early 17th-century construction of the great seminary; more went in 1778 on the walls of the Abbey of St Martin.

But in this house – apparently it is just someone’s house, various aspects of Roman sculpture were preserved….

Also lost – or at least uncertain – is the site of the forum, which would have been the social, legal and commercial centre of Augustodunum. But it is thought to be under the military school.

Augustodonum was well equipped for entertainment. Nearby was a huge ampitheatre, nearly 154m in length, now lost, and there was another theatre near the temple of Janus.

On the hill overlooking the town is another towering, if clearly cut down from its prime, monument, the Pyramid de Couthard. It was a pyramid, rising more than 22m high, and may have either marked, or been a mausoleum in, a cemetery outside the city walls. (These generally lined the roads out of the Roman city.) The area around it was known as the Field of Urns because so many cremation vessels were turned up by the plough.

For the hole you can blame an abbott, who in 1640 was surely searching for treasure, although he wasn’t the only one to have a go over the years.

What’s striking about this site, and one similarity to the “temple of Janus” is that the grandest building of the middle ages (and later) in Autun, the Cathedral, is always in view from both; it seems indeed to sit as a challenge to both. A millennium after the great Roman structures were built, the new civilisation was trying, still with far less technology and knowledge, to match the architectural feats of its forebears.