XVIII Béziers, France (Julia Baeterrae Septimanorum)

What3words – wider.charted.shiny

Visited August 2023

Status – Hiding beneath the surface

Construction date - 100AD

Capacity - 13,700

On the Via Domitia super highway from Italy to Spain lie a number of  major Roman strategic towns which later became colonial resettlement outposts. Situated on a raised and defensible  rocky bluff on a bend in the River Orbe, Béziers is a pretty and pleasant town with great mediaeval buildings, streets and squares. Not much that is Roman survives intact or even visible.

Its Amphitheatre in the Quartier St. Jaques made use of a gully in the bluff so was of the ‘one row of arches on one side rising to two on the other’ type. As you approach, odd curves in the lines of narrow streets, tell-tale street names, and a stone arch in a wall around a public garden opened after excavation in the 1990s tell you what lies beneath. The pattern and orientation make themselves known on aerial photos. ‘Rue Des Puits Des Arênes’ (Road of the Arena pits) is a giveaway, i.e. we’ve taken the stone, used the foundations and now here’s a nice hole to dump a few hundred years worth of rubbish into.

In the garden itself you can descend to the level of the ‘playing surface’ or climb to the impasse on the south side and stand on top of the largest section of corridor wall. Quarried, eroded and barnacled with houses like an oyster shell in a rock pool. Estimated to have seated 13,700.

The row of columns is thought to be the work of some dodgy 19th century character who wanted a picturesque ‘Roman’ back yard and bought a job lot from the equivalent of the local garden centre. More helpful are the road markings, particularly in the Place du Cirque and the Rue Sainte-Jaques the piers, supporting walls and curved perimeter wall lines are picked out in contrasting stone paving and setts. The map on the entrance gate shows these in red.