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Arribère deus Gleysias, Lalonquette

villa
Type
villa

Lalonquette

Pleiades ID: 249924

villa

Description

A Gallo-Roman villa that is expanded upon the second and third centuries A.D.

See Further

  • BAtlas 25 E2 18
    Talbert, Richard J. A., ed. Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/43970336.
    Access
  • Balmelle 1987; Balmelle 1987b 1.121-32
    C Balmelle. Recueil Général Des Mosaïques de La Gaule IV: Aquitaine. 2 vols. Paris, 1987.
  • CAG 64 510
    Fabre, G. Carte archéologique de la Gaule 64 Pyrénées-Atlantiques. Paris: Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres : Association pour les fouilles archéologiques nationales (AFAN), 1994. https://worldcat.org/title/30740830.
    Access
  • PECS (Perseus) LALONQUETTE Basses-Pyrénées, France
    Stillwell, Richard, William L MacDonald, and Marian Holland McAllister, eds. The Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1976. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0006.
    Access
  • La villa gallo-romaine de Lalonquette
    Access
  • Marzano 2018 231-2
    Marzano, Annalisa. The Roman Villa in the Mediterranean Basin: Late Republic to Late Antiquity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.

See Also

  • RFO 18648
    Åhlfeldt, Johan. Regnum Francorum Online, 2009. http://francia.ahlfeldt.se/.
    Access

Names

Creators & Contributors

H.S. Sivan S.J. Keay R.W. Mathisen Sean Gillies R. Talbert Johan Åhlfeldt Tom Elliott Jeffrey Becker

Citation Information

H.S. Sivan, S.J. Keay, and R.W. Mathisen. "Lalonquette" Pleiades, 30 June 2024. https://pleiades.stoa.org/places/249924.
Last modified: 2024-06-30T15:21:59Z

Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites (PECS)

PECS Reference

LALONQUETTE Basses-Pyrénées, France.

Halfway between Beneharnum (Lescar) and Vicus Julii (Aire-sur-l'Adour), near a Roman road that linked these two cities and continued N towards Burdigala (Bordeaux) and S towards Spain are ancient remains on the edge of the river Gabas around the area called Lou Gleyzia. They cover several hectares. To the E, on the national highway from Pau to Bordeaux, can be seen a building the central part of which has been excavated, and some outlying farm buildings that were added W of the road. Noteworthy among the latter is a water mill with a dam, penstock, and tail-lock.

The site has been known since 1843. In 1959 deep excavations revealed some 4th c. mosaics. Houses had been burnt down and rebuilt on the site several times from the end of the 1st c. to the 5th and possibly 6th c., when the inhabitants left for the hills. The earliest architectural strata, now being excavated, can be dated by pottery (terra sigillata decorated with aquatic plants), and 1st c. coins. These strata mark the site of a semi-rural settlement consisting of a few public buildings, separated from one another. Among them is a finely built bath building, a huge rectangular room with an apse on one of the long sides, heated by a hypocaust on low piers, and perhaps a small temple. These buildings survived throughout the whole of the 2d c., and additional buildings were placed around a little square with a well in the middle. The walls are not thick, but are solidly built and decorated with paintings. A large marble basin, incongruous in a purely agricultural building, denotes a certain wealth.

To the W is a large hall opening onto a portico; it can readily be dated by a store of 63 coins from the period from Claudius to Commodus, including 19 from Hadrian's reign. The settlement seems to have flourished in the 3d c. under the Tetrici (46 coins with their names). Various changes seem to have been made at this time: the square became a porticoed courtyard, the bath building was given a new raised hypocaust, and there is a columned atrium against the S wall, although this may date from the preceding period. To the S, a kind of rectangular cella was built on the axis of a large courtyard ringed with buildings. Outside this complex are some rooms filled with piles of metal slag, a sign that craftsmen worked there. To the N the buildings are set closer together; they were all heated by a network of pipes radiating hot air under the mosaic floors. The buildings were destroyed in a severe fire.

In the 4th c. a luxurious villa was built over the original settlement; its walls were erected on the leveled walls from the previous period. The baths were rebuilt, the apsidal hall modified, and both were incorporated in an elaborate complex, with many apses and vistas, arranged around the 3d c. peristyle courtyard, which was raised. The mosaics were restored and the well replaced by a pool sheltered by a sort of tetrapylon. An oecus was added, opening to the E, and a gallery 30 m long was built on the banks of the Gabas with an apse at either end. From the SE corner of the courtyard a series of vestibules of various shapes—octagonal and square—all richly decorated with somewhat carelessly executed geometric mosaics, led to a portico opening to the S on gardens (created on top of buildings razed in the 3d c.). Another collection of 57 coins, 46 of them from the reigns of Constantine and his sons, was found S of the baths under a mosaic that was added at the end of the 4th c. The same date probably should be assigned to the gallery mosaic and especially to that in the oecus, the theme of which is very common in Dalmatia, Palestine, and North Africa in the early 5th c.

The villa apparently survived the Visigoth invasions. Later a modest building, possibly a chapel, was erected on its ruins. In front of its E wall is a solid mass of stone resembling an altar. It is surrounded by tombs, but no grave furnishings have been found.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

P. Courteault, “Bibliographie des mosaïques gallo-romaines du Béarn IV: Lalonquette,”REA 11 (1909) 162ff; J. Lauffray, “Note sur les mosaïques de Lalonquette,” Bulletin de la Sté des Sciences, Lettres et Arts de Pau 20 (1959); id., “Lalonquette, Nouvelles découvertes archéologiques,”REA 24 (1963); J. Coupry, “Informations,” Gallia 17, 1 (1959) 407I; 19, 2 (1961) 396-98; 21, 2 (1963) 535-36; 23, 2 (1965) 441; 27, 2 (1969) 376-78.

J. LAUFFRAY

Location

43.502662, -0.310707