It’s a 50-mile drive through Provence from our home-base in Aix-en-Provence to Arles. Our first stop this morning was at Daudet’s Windmill. I’m tempted to make another stop or two along the way to see some Roman ruins. There’s no shortage of ’em in this part of France. I guess you could say we’re “Roman around in Provence.”
Gaul
“Gaul” was the Roman name for the region we know as France. The Romans moved into Gaul by fighting locals in the Gallic wars in the first century, AD. They must have liked it here, because they stayed for almost 500 years.
Southern France was a huge Roman hang-out. There are Roman ruins all over the place. You know how those Romans were — industrious as ants after double-shot lattés. It seems as if they never sat still for a minute.
It didn’t hurt that they used slave labor to do a lot of the heavy lifting. In those days, if you were on the losing side of a battle, (and lived), you would most-likely become the property of the winning side. The Romans won a lot of battles, so the Roman labor pool was sizeable.
The largest site of Roman ruins in southern France is at Vaison-le-Romaine. Remains of a Roman city are spread out over 40 acres at this site. Shops and villas lined the streets of this ancient city. Roman baths, an ampitheater – it’s all here.
Wherever Romans built cities, they built aqueducts to bring water from wherever they found it to wherever they needed it. (Just like we do). There are ruins of Roman aqueducts all over southern France.
Gotta Have Water
The most impressive Roman aqueduct in France, (or anywhere), is a water-bridge called Pont du Gard. Nimes, an important city in the Roman Empire, needed water. But the nearest source was natural springs that were 30 miles away. Build a 30-mile long aqueduct over the rough, rocky terrain of southern France? No problem! We’re ancient Romans. We’re as industrious as ants!
To get water from the natural springs to the city, Roman engineers had to design and build a bridge across a wide, 160-foot-deep gorge. It took five years, but they did it. (Of course they did!)
Now it’s called Pont du Gard. You’ve probably seen pictures of it. The amazing thing to me is that they built these structures without mortar or any kind of glue to hold the stones in place. Limestone blocks were measured and cut so well that there was no need. And that was almost 2,000 years ago.
Back in the day, Arles was a major city in the Roman empire. It’s strategically located at the mouth of the Rhône river, which goes way, way up into France. For the Romans, Arles was a gateway into much of the continent.
A Roman Factory
There’s a site just outside of Arles that’s worth mentioning. One day in 1940, a French guy was wondering around in the countryside outside of Arles when he came upon some half-hidden Roman ruins. They’d been mostly covered up over the years by the changing landscape. (Think of weeds in the back yard being out of control for 1,500 years).
The more he scrounged around, the more buildings he found. They were all attached, and they formed a line going down the side of a hill. He had found a gigantic series of flour mills powered by water from an aqueduct.
Romans had been known to use not just wind, but water to power a mill. Inside the mill, a big rotating stone ground wheat into flour. But this set-up wasn’t just a mill. It was a string of interconnected mills that were set up like a big factory. It turned out to be the biggest milling operation anywhere in the Roman empire.
There were two rows of eight mills, each with a waterwheel. They were situated on the side of a hill so water flowing over the top of one waterwheel would land on the next one below it, turning them both, and so on down the line. Each mill had a big hopper that was kept full of grain that was fed into the grinding stones.
People who study these things say the Romans could produce enough flour at this site to feed a city of more than 10,000 people. The funny thing is that something this large wasn’t found until 1940.
Arles
As we come into Arles, another Roman structure dominates the space. It’s a neat 20,000-seat ampitheater, built in 90 AD. Can you imagine, back in the day, sitting inside watching chariot races and who-knows what else?
I suspect that not very many people think of the South of France when they think about Roman ruins. But this region was part of the Roman Empire for centuries. And you know those ancient Romans, they didn’t like to sit still. As industrious as ants, they were!
To be continued…
The photo of the ampitheater at Arles is thanks to Rolf Süssbrich/Wikimedia Commons
