Villascopia is a new, dramatic form of archeological site where visitors no longer need to struggle to imagine the scene eighteen centuries earlier, when Rome ruled Gaul and most of the known world. Remarkable computer technology recreates the memory and emotions of life in a Gallo-Roman villa when some famous visitors came to stay.
The villa of Lamarque, at Castelculier near Agen in the Lot-et-Garonne in south-west France, was known to exist but its 3rd century ruins first began to attract the attention of leading archeologists back in 1970 when a superb statue of Minerva was discovered. Excavations completed in 1986 established that the villa possessed more than 1,000 square metres of thermal baths, the largest of their kind anywhere in Aquitaine. It is here, thanks to scénovision, an exciting new concept with 3D generated images, that a show can be seen which stirs all the senses and generates dramatic images of life in ancient times.
By chance we know all about Lamarque because of two men who visited the villa in 389 A.D. One was Decimus Magnus Ausonius, arguably the best poet using the Latin language, the son of a prosperous doctor and born in Bordeaux. The other was his nephew, Paulin, born at Pella at Macedonia but a refugee from the early age of three, forced to flee to Bordeaux by the invasion of the Visigoths. Thanks to Ausonius’s support, Paulin became a successful lawyer, so renowned for his command of Latin that the Emperor Valentinian appointed him tutor to his son Gratian, who became emperor in his turn. Gratian had huge respect for Paulin, making him questor, prefect of the courts, then consul of Gaul and later consul of Asia Minor.
When the show opens, Ausonius has died and Paulin is an old man, writing his memoirs. He is recalling the most memorable three days of his life, spent at Villa Lamarque in high summer at the age of fourteen. Its owner Sévérus, a rich Roman, holds a banquet in honour of the visitors, and Paulin strikes up a friendship with Sévérus’s two children, Victorianus and Sabina. Victorianus, who has a passion for architecture, shows Paulin around the house and takes him into the baths that Victorianus personally designed.
Museum and gardens
Although of course we cannot know exactly what was said so long ago, or even what happened to Sévérus and his family, with the barbarians soon to be at the gates. However, the ceramics found at Lamarque add little nuances to the account. In the frigidarium, the large pool used to cool off after immersion in the hot baths, a ring was discovered that matches a description given to us by Paulin, almost certainly the gift from Victorianus to Paulin to seal their friendship. So excited was Paulin by the experience that he dropped his new ring in the frigidarium, was too embarrassed to tell Victorianus what had happened, and left for home without it.
Villascopia is open all year round at weekends, except in January, and on progressively more days as summer approaches, then every day in July and August. The show’s commentary is in French. One can also visit the landscaped archaeoligical gardens and an informative museum.
Tel: 00 33 5 53 68 08 68
villascopia@hotmail.fr
www.tourisme-lotetgaronne.com
From our December 2007 e-newsletter
