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BOURGES (Town) CHER
Avaricum (Bourges) Cher, France.
The chief city of the Bituriges Urbi at the time of the Gallic wars, Avaricum
gets its name from the Avara river (modern Yevre). The city stood on a hill 25
m high and covering 26 ha at the heart of a complicated network of waterways:
five rivers, the Yevre, Yevrette, Voiselle, Moulon, and Auron meet here. It was
surrounded by wide stretches of marshlands, except to the SE, where a sort of
isthmus, 2 to 500 m wide today and no doubt far narrower in antiquity, connected
the hill with terra firma. Avaricum was reputed to be the finest city in Gaul,
and its inhabitants refused to destroy it when Caesar invaded the region in March
52 B.C. They put their faith in their fortifications, a murus gallicus of mixed
stones and beams similar to that found in the same tribe's territory at Chateaumeillant
(Mediolanum Biturigum); this type of fortification seems to have become widespread
at the beginning of the 1st c. B.C. Caesar set up camp on the isthmus, on the
site of the modern Place Seraucourt, 300 m S of the rampart. Vercingetorix took
up his first position 25.6 km NE of Avaricum, on the Sancerre road; later he moved
closer to the besieged Gauls, easily communicating with them across the marshes.
After 27 days of siege the city was taken and destroyed. No trace has been found
of it and we know nothing about its monuments, only that there was a public square
in the city center, which Caesar calls a forum.
The history of Avaricum in the Roman period may be traced stratigraphically
thanks to excavations carried out in 1964-65 near the surrounding wall built in
the Late Empire (see below) and around the site of the old church of Notre Dame
de Sales. Inside the wall five superimposed building strata were uncovered, ranging
from the Augustan period to the late 3d c. The buildings were probably private
houses, some of which retain their painted walls.
During the Middle Empire the city was on the hill where the Gallic
town stood. Even today this section of the city has extremely steep streets oriented
more or less according to the points of the compass. The Rue Moyenne, probably
the old cardo inaxiinus, has remained the principal artery; the Rue Porte Jaune
runs parallel to it on the E, and these two cardines are intersected by three
decumani, the farthest N of which corresponds to the present Rue Coursalon.
In the basements of buildings between the Rue Moyenne and the cathedral
can be seen the remains of a large temple of the Antonine period, including fluted
Tuscan columns, elements of the stylobates and podium, and fragments of the entablature
(architraves, friezes, and cornices).
In the 1st c. the W side of the hill underwent some large-scale town
planning at the point where the Argentomagus road, linking the Caesarodunuin-Cabillonuin
route to that from Limonum to Lugdunum, entered the city. A N-S wall with a monumental
gateway encircled the foot of the hill. The gate opened onto a paved vestibule
from which steps and ramps led to the upper city.
In the 2d c. the same area was redesigned on an even more monumental
scale. A series of alternately square and semicircular vaulted chambers was built
to support the hillside; this complex, separated from the hill by a drainage ditch
0.6 m wide and 5 m deep, was erected in front of the 1st c. buildings, concealing
them and making them unusable. The rooms are built of a core of mortared rubble
faced with small stones and banded with brick. The facade consisted of arcades
built of large blocks of stone, supported by piers with engaged Tuscan columns
as well as fluted and cabled columns. This facade probably extended on either
side of a monumental fountain cut in the rock, a rectangular basin set in the
middle of a paved area with cippi standing on it. The arrangement follows the
formulas for building on hills that had been perfected in the 2d c. B.C., notably
at Praeneste, and used in Imperial times, for instance at Carthage.
These buildings were in turn ringed by the Late Empire rampart, and
the whole complex served as a basis for the palace of Duke Jean de Berry. When
the cellars of this palace, underneath some modern houses, were explored in 1860
the remains described above, which are still accessible today, were uncovered.
Avaricum's amphitheater stood NW of the city on the site of the present-day
Place de la Nation, which has very nearly retained the elliptical plan. It was
still sufficiently well preserved at the beginning of the 16th c. to be used for
theatrical productions.
The course of an aqueduct has also been located: it came into the
city from the E, N of the cathedral, and continued up to the city center.
Avaricum's prosperity in the 2d and 3d c. is attested by funerary
monuments. An entablature fragment from a large circular mausoleum discovered
near the Porte de Lyon is now in the museum; it had been reused in the lowest
layers of the rampart, and has a frieze with carvings of tritons above a richly
decorated cornice. A number of funerary cippi have been unearthed at various points
in the city. The earliest ones are without sculptural decoration. From the second
half of the 2d c. on, rectangular cippi appear, made in imitation of a mausoleum
with a gabled roof with acroteria. On the front a niche framed by piers with carved
foliage holds the image of the deceased; his epitaph is engraved on the archivolt.
Some of these carved figures, either full- or half-length, are good portraits
in the so-called realist style of the middle of the 3d c. Others give a very lively
picture of the activities of the deceased; one of the most remarkable and most
recently discovered shows a rich man sitting jealously on his coffers.
Ravaged by the invasions of 256 and 257, Avaricum, like most of the
cities of Gaul, was forced to build a rampart; its course has been located with
certainty and important fragments are still standing. The area it protected was
more or less the same as in the Gallic city (26 ha), which makes it one of the
largest castra in Gaul, surpassed only by Rheiins, Sens, Poitiers, and Bordeaux.
The total length of the rampart is 1830 m, and it had 46 towers. The foundations
are made of courses of large blocks, often taken from earlier buildings; the rampart
itself has a core of mortared rubble faced with small stones and banded with brick.
Two coins of Tetricus found beneath the foundation date the construction in the
last quarter of the 3d c. The section best preserved today is to the SE, in the
area of the old church NW of Sales. Another important portion constitutes the
foundation for the palace of Jacques Coeur, to the NW.
G.C. Picard, ed.
This text is from: The Princeton encyclopedia of classical sites,
Princeton University Press 1976. Cited Feb 2006 from
Perseus Project URL below, which contains bibliography & interesting hyperlinks.
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