When and why were the habitations within the amphitheater removed? 1b
At the end of the 18th century, the city of Nîmes wanted to embellish
both the city and its monuments. It therefore decided to purchase
the constructions that surrounded part of the amphitheater
as well as all the others within the amphitheater.
It was a kind of district of the city,
which in the Middle Ages was called "the château of the Arena,"
with a square, a well, chapels, and many buildings.
In 1800, the architect Victor Grangent,
who was an engineer from the famous Ponts et Chaussées school, began the excavation work.
In 1809, he started removing all of the constructions and
all of the ruins within the amphitheater.
The arena floor that we know
was buried under a heap 6 to 7 meters deep of ruins.
Grangent would clean up the amphitheater and bring it closer to its original appearance by the end of his work. 14b
Who continued the restoration work?
Several architects would continue the work started by Grangent,
including Charles Questel and Auguste Pelet.
Auguste Pelet, an archeologist from Nîmes, completed an absolutely remarkable collection
of models of the monuments in Nîmes,
and in the Roman world at the scale of 1:100
in cork--a material that ages well and can be used for precise details.
The model we are looking at is a representation of the monument in the 1850s--1860s.
After these archeologists, restorers, and architects, Henri Révoil arrived.
Henri Révoil was an Architect of Historical Monuments
who oversaw the complete restoration of the monument from 1854 to 1870.
He would see to the consolidation of the lintels on the first level.
He would consolidate staircases and create ones that were missing.
Then, he recreated the first ten rows of the cavea.
This was really a major undertaking.
He was helped by architects from Nîmes,
including the famous Charles Durand.
We must not forget, because there was a considerable amount of work to be done.
And the Arena would progressively take on the shape and the volume we see today
and even before the great restoration project conducted by Révoil.
For 16 years, Révoil would work hard to restore the monument considerably.
He left us some "attachment notebooks"
that are altogether remarkable--120 pages of highly colored images.
He also invented the "teleiconographer".
It's a device that enabled him to draw elements in the amphitheater from a distance. 38b
Was this work written up in any scientific publications?
Indeed, his work left behind traces, in particular on the monument.
But also in the literature and in the historical monuments archives,
for the monitoring of the restoration work on historical monuments.
And then by somebody who is well known here at the Archeology Museum, Félix Mazauric.
Félix Mazauric was a speleologist who was an expert in hydrology.
He was interested in geology, prehistory, and tourism.
Then he became the curator of the Archeology Museum in 1906.
As soon as he got a position here in this building,
he would write the first scientific document on underground rooms of the Nîmes amphitheater.
It's a booklet published in the memoirs of the Académie de Nîmes,
which explains at length the complexity of the amphitheater's hydraulic system.
Then, in the second part of his life,
he devoted himself to writing the history of the Château located in the Arena.
He studied charters and the local archives
to write this remarkable work, but he would never see it published.
It's his daughter, Lucie Mazauric, who would publish this work in 1934
in a journal specializing in history and archeology (Les cahiers d'histoire et d'archéologie).
Mazauric was an erudite scholar, poet, and free and independent thinker.
When Mazauric died, Émile Espérandieu, who was an officer, took over
and also became the curator of the Archeology Museum.
He was an epigrapher, an archeologist who had a career especially in North Africa.
But he was given the mission in France in 1904
of writing a work on bas reliefs and sculptures in Roman Gaul.
He wrote a certain number of articles, including a booklet about the amphitheater,
which he published in the series on monuments of France in 1933.
This booklet would remain valid until the 1980s. 64b
Were the excavation methods different from the ones used today?
Archeology in the 19th century
was not at all the same as archeology in the 21st century.
In the 19th century, those who did this work were at the same time architects and archeologists,
with extensive training in the classics. They were passionate,
but went straight to what was essential, that is they tried to give
the best possible interpretation of the monument and the amphitheater.
The archeologists of the 21st century do not have that concern.
They go into the tiny details that enable them to better understand
the construction or the way the building project was managed in Roman times.