Narbonne Archaeological Museum

The archaeological museum occupies a couple floors in one section of the palais of archives. To our pleasant surprise, it included much more than the Roman bits we expected. Everything was from local sites.

The Empire at Hadrian's death, Hadrian being one of the Five
Good Emperors and therefore a personal favorite; also the
maximum extent of the Empire; click to enlarge and see how
current place names evolved from Roman ones 

Some nice reconstructed mosaics

Among the best parts, I thought, were displays on Roman
construction methods...here a predecessor to dry wall

Roofing

The hard work of reconstructing paintings from
the thousands of bits uncovered

Among the better ones

Most are shards or less

The best: Victory and Genius, and upper right, a bust of Apollo

Landscape, sort of

Among the Greek pieces found in Narbonne: preparing to do
a triple back-flip/cannonball off the 40m tower...

 

Thousands of years before the discovery of Melmac

Oil lamps

Nice glass

And quicker than you can say "Ad Majorem
Gloriam Dei" we are in the Medieval section

You can tell because of their great sense of humor

And mastery of biology

And now, shazam!, we are in the paleolithic section with
some seriously nice cave and bone carvings 

Trepanation, a cultural universal; not covered by Medicare,
however

I want one of these

Next slide, please

And back into the Medieval/Roman era

And ending with a seriously nice, geometrically interesting floor
mosaic

Narbonne Scenes

The road took us October 10th to Narbonne, a city we had not visited before. Apart from the famous name, a couple of things intrigued and attracted us: 1) the historical museum has (bits of) Roman paintings said to be of high quality and 2) the cathedral is the third highest of all Gothic cathedrals, behind only Beauvais and Amiens. Both claims are somewhat exaggerated, but we found Narbonne to be a beautiful and welcoming place, and we stayed two days.

Just outside the old city, just before the aire-de-camping-cars;
a billboard, no less, regular size; where else in the world would
you see something like this? where else in the world do they
require philosophy 101 for high school graduation? where else
does the entire nation wait to debate the annual high school
philosophy examination questions? where else are there
philosophy magazines at the Presses?

Narbonne's aire; a bit pricey, but they provide electricity and
free bus transportation all around town; and there is a most
wonderful shopping area nearby and a Carrefour that nearly
changed our long-standing travel plans

In the old town, the old market hall; beautiful art nouveau

The Canal de la Robline

The Palace of Archives; former bishoprical
palace, I imagine; within is the archaeological
museum we sought

Thus

The Via Domitius passes through Narbonne,
en route to Spain; includes many restaurants

The pizza is hers, the moules et frites for me

Beautiful old A-N building, now the Monoprix

Detail

A bit of the Via Domitius in the city square

Street scene

On the quai/canal again

Marche from other side of canal

It was here we started commenting on the Mediterranean
light; but I think it was just the season and time of day

More to come

Driving The Coast To Narbonne

Normally we speed through Perpignan and environs whether coming from or going to France or Spain. One year we did spend a fair amount of time in Cathar country, but we had not spent any time on the coast in the region. Next time, we'll not miss it, especially towns like Banyuls sur Mer, Collioure, Argeles Plage, and so on. After Port Vendres, we continued along the coast, in no special hurry (yes, I know), appreciating the scenery, being knocked out by the number of campers and campgrounds, noting how the mountains/coves/harbors gives way to beaches and lagoons as the Pyrenees finally peter out. We had not been to Narbonne before, and, with a good aire there, we set our course for that old and beautiful city.

France is archaeological heaven, and not a
little of it is celebrated in wine: here, a wine
for the 450,000 year old human remains found
in Rousillon 

The connection with Catalonia: when Franco finally took
Barcelona in 1939, 100,000--100,000--refugees streamed east
into France; many stayed, but were first housed in a vast
detention camp on this beach...

100,000...

Back-lit Mediterranean France

Miles upon miles of nearly deserted beaches

On a lagoon south of Perpignan, the city has reconstructed a
19th city fisherman's [sic] village

No country interprets nor celebrates its past like France...

Lunch break by the sea