GALLO-ROMAN MUSEUM

The collections of the Gallo-Roman Museum are all archaeological in nature and were split into two entities with different legal status until 2021. They were globally constituted between 1959 and 2005, according to the successive archaeological excavation campaigns carried out on the site of the ancient villa of Lalonquette.

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They were carried out in the first place by Jean Lauffray (Architect of the Monuments of France then Researcher at the IRAA-CNRS) from 1959 to 1972. The land belonging at the time to a private owner, the collections resulting from this campaign belonged to to the State and have been kept since at the departmental depot of Hasparren and at the Aquitaine Museum for mosaics.

The Community of communes of Luys en Béarn having acquired the land which housed the remains in the early 2000s, it automatically obtained full ownership of the collections resulting from the excavations directed by François Réchin (Professor of archeology - IRAA -CNRS de Pau) between 2000 and 2005.

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The development of the reserves during the museum's extension program made it possible, on the one hand, to reunite the collections in the same place and, on the other hand, to obtain the devolution of ownership of the State collections. Since January 2021, the Community of Municipalities is therefore the sole owner of all the collections of the Gallo-Roman villa and has for mission their conservation, their study and their promotion.

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The museum is also authorized to keep in deposit other collections of the territory, such as the archaeological furniture of the ancient villa of Taron or the archaeological furniture from the multiple pedestrian prospecting campaigns carried out in the former canton of Thèze in the 1990s. .