GALLO-ROMAN MUSEUM
& Archaeological site of the villa of Lalonquette
A unique device
Launched in January 2015, the campaign for the conservation and enhancement of the villa aimed to solidify the cultural project by connecting the original site to the space which traces its history. The ambition displayed here is to reconcile the imperatives of safeguarding the remains for future generations while offering future visitors the keys to such a reading. patrimony.
The complexity of such a project lies in the necessary bias in the choice of valuation which must take into account many parameters. First, the state of conservation of the remains made it difficult to reconcile the crystallization of the site and the reception of the public. In the state of disrepair of the site added his difficult comprehension for the uninitiated. Indeed, the complex tangle of foundations of walls of the successive states of the establishments of the Gallo-Roman villa are extremely difficult to understand.
Nevertheless, the precision of the plan of the remains produced by Jean LAUFFRAY in 1972 and the recent revision of the chronological and structural interpretations of the buildings proposed by François RECHIN (Professor of archeology at the University of Pau and the Pays de l'Adour) allow to better understand the process of rebirth of the establishment in the 4th century - a period of peace and prosperity for Aquitaine. It is this model, that of the country palace in its latest state, which will be presented to the public.
The year 2018 marked the end of a vast program of conservation and enhancement of the site. At the end of three years of work, which will have made it possible to preserve the remains and to identify their exact contours, the villa is now revealed to the public thanks to a completely contemporary reading.
The layout of the plan of the villa that you will observe and in which you will be able to stroll consists of an exact restitution of the location of the ancient walls, at scale 1 and in line with the existing walls. Under your feet, the Gallo-Roman villa still remains ...