Lost and found - then lost and found again: The mosaics of Villa de Séviac

Here are some pictures from a flying visit last weekend to the Gers region of south-western France. In the 4th century, a huge Gallo-Romano villa stood on this site at Séviac near Toulouse; it was the hub from which a thriving 300-hectare estate was managed, and its hilly surroundings are still covered in rows of vines punctuated by the occasional cypress tree.

As is often the case, the identity of the villa’s owners is unknown, but their wealth was exceptional, and the villa is an incredibly lavish expression of their prestige. It has one of the largest private bath areas ever discovered in the Roman provinces, and almost every room of the main house has mosaic floors - 625m² of mosaics remain and it’s thought that when the villa was completed (probably just as the 4th century turned into the 5th), there were 1,500m².  

Mosaics from the earliest stages of the building programme are mostly lively geometric patterns

Dolphin-fin waves combine to create an Escher-like effect

Within the last 10 years, a bold protective super-structure has been built over the mosaics to designs by the Portuguese architect, João Luís Carrilho da Graça. The clean lines and slight translucence of his light-filtering roof add greatly to the visitor experience - or at least to mine, anyway!

Mosaic materials in a huge range of colours seems to have been sourced from quarries all over the Pyrenees, and the area where the artisans worked, close to the compound’s outer wall, is still discernible from the tesserae fragments strewn around. 

Southern Gaul, although 1,200 miles from the centre of the empire in Rome itself, was anything but a backwater.  Proximity to the ports of Narbo Martius (modern Narbonne) and Massilia (Marseille), and access to the great Roman highway of the Via Domitia, which connected Italy with Spain, made this area a trade and military corridor. But the underpinnings of Roman security and wealth on which Séviac was built were, even before the building was completed, under threat; the administration of the western empire was crumbling, and Rome was losing its ability to exert central political control over its provinces.  In 670CE a massive fire damaged a major part of the villa, and the archaeology shows that it was never fully rebuilt although three small dwellings were put up inside the ruined shell.

Blackened areas from the disastrous fire of 670CE

That we can see the Séviac mosaics is something of a miracle.  Construction of a new farm in the 1860s unearthed many tesserae and, after some exploratory digging, parts of several of the floors were revealed. By the early 1900s, an eminent local surgeon, Odilon Lannelongue (1840-1911), had begun to take a serious interest in the site, attempting excavations and cataloguing what he found.  But the First World War intervened, and archaeological investigations were abandoned.  Séviac remained utterly untouched for more than forty years and its desertion was so complete that the location of the mosaics was forgotten.  However, stories of the 1911 dig, related by a local man to his small daughter, had planted a seed in her imagination. Paulette Aragon-Launet (1913-1992) dreamed of finding the ‘buried palace’ her father had described, but it wasn’t until the late 1950s that she, by then digging with the help of her own small children, found the site.  She enlisted local archaeologists and set in train a series of annual digs that lasted until the 1990s and saw the whole villa and its enormous bath house uncovered, preserved and recorded.  Paulette Launet devoted the rest of her life to the heritage of the Armagnac region, becoming a passionate advocate for at-risk historic sites. She finally saw the Villa de Séviac declared a listed monument in 1978. 

Elaborate guilloche pattern on the floor of the main hot-water bath

Mosaics created during a period of refurbishment of the villa in the early 5th century have fewer geometric motifs, and more naturalistic themes of foliage and fruit

As if this wasn’t enough of ancient Rome for one day (luckily, I was with lovely, patient, mosaic-tolerant friends) we came across an amazing tiny museum in the nearby hilltop town of Lectoure which houses artefacts from the city’s Gallo-Roman past. The collection is housed in the cellars of the former Bishop’s Palace.

Apothecary's garden near the Bishop's Palace in Lectoure

The museum is so small and un-visited that a key had to be fetched to let us in and the gardienne hovered about while we explored.  The mosaics were fascinating, as were the taurobolic altars – these are stone altars used in rituals during which a bull was sacrificed to the goddess Cybele.  To a modern visitor, their elegantly carved inscriptions feel very much at odds with their grisly purpose.

Taurobolic altars, PHOTO ©SlowEurope

The Greek god, Oceanus. Looking shifty. He knows we don't approve of his marriage to his sister, Tethys. He was the oldest Titan, son of Uranus (Heaven) and Gaia (Earth)

I'm told that if you want to write a successful blog you have to include photos of your lunch - so here's ours

View from the ramparts at Lectoure

So, a great weekend in a beautiful place - particularly if you happen to like mosaics. With thanks to my dear friend Selina.