XXIV Tours (Ceasarodunum)
What3words – files.holly.backdrop
Construction date – 1st 2nd and 3rd centuries AD
Capacity – 36,000
Visited January 2024
Status – What remains is hidden underground but apparent in the street pattern.
Known buried elements shown red
This is one that appears on the ‘Invisible’ list because you can go there, walk around and through the site and go away with the impression that there’s something irregular or odd about this part of the city but without seeing visible evidence of anything Roman or resembling a surviving fragment of amphitheatre. The Tours arena was completely forgotten until 1853, despite having been massive, with a capacity of 36,000 at its most extended, in a Roman city with an estimated population of just 6,000.
There are several reasons for this. First, it was not only of Type 2/Type 3 construction www.romanamphitheatre.co.uk/types (An elliptical earth bank with wooden seating and an outer retaining wall and external vomitoria) but the location itself was originally a natural mound to the east of the settlement which was adapted by hollowing out its centre and banking the spoil to form the bowl. Secondly it went through a separate phase of expansion which largely buried the outer supporting stonework beneath more banking. Thirdly because in the late Roman period it was adapted and fortified, becoming part of a defensive rampart and, fourthly because in the mediaeval period it was built on with a number of substantial houses connected with the adjacent cathedral, which were continuously occupied by monks and other clergy well into the 19th Century.
Pink - 1st Century Amphitheatre. Green - 2nd Century Expansion. Purple - 3rd Century Defensive Wall.
Rue Manceau at the centre of the Arena
Rue Manceau looking North-West
Rue du Général-Meusnier
In 1853 the Archaeological Society of Touraine started poking around (surveying) the cellars of the houses on the mound. Further surveys of the 1960s and 70s revealed that several of the houses had vaulted cellars, walls and staircases in their basements which were substantially formed from adapted and retained parts of the Roman corridors and vomitoria. The survey work continues to this day but, with the exception of some masonry forming part of a revetment wall in the car park of an industrial unit in the south-eastern extremity, none of the remains are on display or accessible by members the public (not even nosey amphitheatre hunters). There are no tell-tale street names, and the most obvious suggestions of the structure on the ground is the curve of the rue du Général-Meusnier around the south-east and south-west sides.
Aerial photographs show a very regular oval in the inner building line of the houses but the line of rue Manceau which crosses the centre of the site from north-west to south-east does not correspond to the remains or alignment of entrances in the ruins beneath. The remaining section of fortification on the east side, and the building line of the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Tours do however line up exactly with the corresponding entrances which were subsequently blocked as part of the fortifications.
An interesting feature of the buried stonework is the presence of ‘D’ shaped ‘half-turrets’ flanking the original four main entrances. These share similarities with features within the amphitheatre of Ivrea in northern Italy where, it has been suggested, they are a form of structural support or piling to prevent subsidence into the adjacent river. It is possible that the pre-existing mound in which the amphitheatre was constructed may have been unstable and that these structures were put in place to counter this as part of the second phase of expansion.