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