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RESEARCH PRODUCT

City gates of Augustodunum and their architectural models (Gaul, Italy, Western Provinces of the Roman Empire)

subject

description

Augustodunum, civitas Aeduorum, roman city founded under the reign of Augustus, was equipped with four roman city gates : the gate of Arroux and the gate of Saint André, both well preserved, the gate of Saint Andoche which sole remaining part is a flanking tower, and the gate of Rome, destroyed long ago.The heart of this study lies in the stratigraphic reading of those gates structure and in thoughts about the building site of Autun’s city gates operating process. Moreover, since the 16th century, antiquaries, travelers and artists have described in many ways their visits to the roman city gates of Autun. These accounts constitute a major documentary collection of written and iconographical sources that had never been studied as a whole before. A classification of written sources was necessary in order to understand the borrowings from previous works. A similar work of critical study has been realized for the iconographical representations of the gates. As an essential complement of the stratigraphic reading of remaining elevations of the gates, the ancient archeological documentation study was indispensable to propose a restoration hypothesis of Augustodunum’s city gates long term history from their construction time to nowadays. The last section of this study aims to locate Autun’s city gates in the series of monumental city gates built in Western Roman Empire between the 2nd century BC and the 2nd century AD. Furthermore, that section presents new propositions for the restoration of the architectural project, of the gates plan and of the inner organization of these gates flanking towers.