Activities - Visits in Burgundy

• Autun

The city of Autun, "Augustodunum", was based by the emperor Auguste who offered to Eduens a new capital, a city conceived according to the Roman standards.

From its foundation, Autun received the privilege to be surrounded with walls. 6 km long, this wall is the augustéenne surrounding wall the best the kept by France. It possesses another two triumph gates: The door Saint André, in the East, a little reshaped and the door of Arroux, in the North, decorated with elegant pilasters.

Near is the enigmatic "Janus's Temple". Nobody knows to whom was dedicated this building of native tradition. Quite other is the atmosphere which reigns to the Roman theater. This place of entertainment, protected in two thirds, which was the biggest of its kind in all the western part of the Roman Empire, takes back life since a dozen year. Every summer for some evenings, its rows of seats and its mossy vaults welcome thousands of spectators who come to see playing the antique story of the city there, in a big entitled peplos "Augustodunum". Races of chariots in operations in forming of the Roman legionaries, the incantations of the druids in the flasks of perfumes of the patricians, the Antiquity is resuscitated there.

Other leader of work, the cathedral Saint-Lazare of Autun, built after 1120 to welcome the pilgrims who streamed to the grave presumed Saint Lazare, brother of Marie Madeleine, is the Mecca of the Romanic sculpture in Burgundy. Here also, a whole bloom of capitals, for the greater part representational, decorates the pillars of the nave. During the restorations of the church in the XIXth century, a twenty of them was replaced by copies. Originals are now very visible, at the level of man, in the chapter room.