Your ‘French Correspondent’ certainly had a busy year.
Most of the time has been taken up with the local French culture, the language, the house and the garden. Nevertheless, for this year’s (2008) ‘Trumpet’, I travelled south to a beautiful city… Saintes.
Dating back over two thousand years, Saintes was once the capital of one of the tribes of Gaul, the Santones, and of the Roman province of Aquitaine. It was then named Mediolanum Santonum.The guide book records that in order to make this city worthy of the new rank granted by Augustus (The Capital Town of the Roman Province of Great Aquitaine) a town planning scheme was developed.
The main road running across Gaul, coming from Lyons, led to the Arch called Germanicus, its two archways directing the traffic on the bridge across the River Charente. The date is 19 A.D. as recorded in the inscriptions to the Emperor Tiberius and his nephews Germanicus and Drusus. The entablature carries the genealogy of the donor, a local Santonum Senator, Gaius Julius Rufus.
The town of Saintes was one of the first in the south west of Gaul, to be provided with an amphitheatre, roughly at the same time as that at Limoges but before those at Perigueux and Bordeaux. A stone excavated from the arena dates the amphitheatre to 41 – 54 A.D. under Claudius.
It is believed that the Romans’ deep passion for games was originally focused on the forum itself. It is interesting to note that because the town was rebuilt on top of the former remains, it has not been possible to excavate the forum, but the pillars and many remarkable stone pieces are housed in the nearby Musee Archeologique. As I walked around this museum, I thought of the visit we made many years ago to Professor Keppie’s Department at Glasgow University. He would love to see what is here!
The amphitheatre stands on the slopes of an imposing elliptical hollow (in this very flat country there is actually a hill in Saintes) with the centre line of the long axis lying north-east – south-west (126 m x 101 m) leading straight down to the River Charente.The arena is set at a level slightly lower than the natural ground. At the bottom of the valley a stream, fed by rainwater, runs at irregular intervals. A hydraulic structure collected water to the west of the Western Gateway in order to drain the amphitheatre downstream to the river.
Detailed explorations have taken place in narrow trenches from east to west; a masoned canal, one metre deep and eighty centimetres wide, runs under the vault of the eastern Gateway. This changes into a vaulted sewer, emptying itself into the river 800 metres away.
The Guide Book mentions that this amphitheatre combines two techniques – the full-structured and the hollow-structured, with zones of transition from one to the other. It is therefore a ‘mixed-structured amphitheatre’ similar to those in Frejus and Pompei.
I spent such a pleasant day in Saintes and must, of course, return. To see the sites, both Roman and Medieval, the visitor would need at least three days. Saintes converted to Christianity very early in the first century and it became an important religious centre. Sadly, being a frontier town during the Hundred Years War, it experienced the ravages of the Wars of Religion.
There are several Tourist Information Offices around the town and a delightful one at the amphitheatre itself. As with all French hospitality in this region, the members of staff are extremely helpful, pleasant and well-mannered. Entry fee 2 euros!
Nancy Finlay
(Nancy died in June 2008 after two and a half enjoyable years in France. We miss her very much and hope to erect a bench in her memory in 2009 in Newstead).