Roman Heritage Routes

Chiragan Roman villa

Pleiades ID: 250000

villa

Description

An extensive Roman villa located at Chiragan, in the French Commune of Martres-Tolosanes. The site produced significant architectural and sculptural finds that are now in various museums. Most of the site is covered by farmland today.

See Further

BAtlas 25 G2 94
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.

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PECS (Perseus) MARTRES-TOLOSANE Haute-Garonne, 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.

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Wikipedia (French) Villa romaine de Chiragan
Wikipédia: L’encyclopédie libre que chacun peut améliorer (2001-), Villa romaine de Chiragan.

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Mérimée PA31000003
Mérimée. Ministére de la Culture (France), 2014. http://www.culture.gouv.fr/Espace-documentation/Bases-de-donnees/Merimee-consultable-depuis-le-moteur-Collections.

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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. "Chiragan Roman villa" Pleiades, 13 November 2023. https://pleiades.stoa.org/places/250000.

Last modified: 2023-11-13T02:17:52Z

Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites (PECS)

PECS Reference

MARTRES-TOLOSANE Haute-Garonne, France.

1. At Chiragan on the left bank of the Garonne, 19th c. excavations brought to light a large and sumptuous Gallo-Roman villa, which contained an exceptional series of imperial busts and genre sculptures, for the most part inspired by Classical Greek or Hellenistic art. These sculptures are now kept in the Musée Saint-Raymond at Toulouse. The most likely hypothesis is that they constituted a private collection assembled in the 3d c. by a rich connoisseur.

2. In the center of the village of Martres, there existed in the 4th c. another Roman villa, which was ruined around the end of the century or a little later. In its place was built the original Church of Sancta Maria de Martyribus, around which grew an Early Christian necropolis. This has produced several adorned sarcophagi of the School of Aquitaine.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. L. Joulin, Les établissements gallo-romains de la plaine de Martres-Tolosanes. Mém. presentés par divers savants à l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 1st ser., XI.2 (1901)^IP (a fundamental work, but dated in regard to sculptures and esp. the imperial busts, the study of which has been revived by F. Braemer); G. Astre, “Sur l'origine des sculptures gallo-romaines de la villa de Chiragan, à Martres-Tolosane,” Annales du Midi 45 (1933) 307-9; A. Grenier, Manuel . . . II.2 (1934) 832-37, 850-58, & figs. 304-5, 313-16; for some recent discoveries, see M. Labrousse in Gallia 17 (1959) 422.

2. J. Boube, “La nécropole paléo-chrétienne de Martres-Tolosane (Haute-Garonne),” Pallas 3 (1955) 89-115; id., Cahiers archéologiques 9 (1957) 33-72; for report on recent discoveries, see M. Labrousse in Gallia 26 (1968) 526-27.

M. LABROUSSE

Chiragan, Martres-Tolosane