Showing posts with label Aix en Provence. Show all posts. Roman Provence. After his subsequent victories, Marius abandoned the use of the new waterway to the Marseillais who thus extended their influence to Arles, now a port for both river and sea. Caesar records his approach to the city which he designates by Arelate in the Bello Civico I. T he settlers of this new province were given territory taken from that of Marseilles.
Upon Caesar's assassination his nephew and adopted son, the future emperor Augustus, renamed the colony Colonia Julia Paterna Arelate Sextanorum, and visited the town himself around 40 BCE to organise this bastion of Roman power which then imposed itself against its rival Marseille.
With the creation of the colony, the people of Arles, freed from the tutelage of Marseilles, became true Roman citizens with the possibility of taking part in the deliberations of the people in the assemblies of the capital when they went there. As such, the Arlesians were registered as one of the tribes of Rome, the Teretina tribe. Arelate was an important city in Roman times, of which it has preserved many vestiges, in particular the arenas and the necropolis of Alyscamps. Strabo in 18 AD referred to the commercial role of the city, and a little later Pliny the Elder mentioned Arelate Sextanorum.
From the beginning of the century a Roman road, the via Agrippa , linked the city to Vienne and Lyon. Besieged in , , , and , the city was finally taken by the Visigoth king Euric for the first time in and then definitively in Also destroyed were two churches, Saint-Julien and Saint-Pierre-de-Trinquetaille, whilst the amphitheatre, the ramparts and Notre-Dame-de-la-Major werev rendered seriously damaged.
The Roman amphitheatre in Arles in the 19th century and in with Drake Winston two years after the completion of the restoration campaign led by Alain-Charles Perrot, Chief Architect of Historic Monuments. Nearly 25 million euros were devoted to this restoration which lasted ten years and which was, at that time, one of the largest sites on Heritage in France.
