Glanum - The Monumental Center

The Monumental Center

Glanum was laid out on north-south axis through the valley of Notre-Dame-du-Vallon. At the northern end was the residential quarter, with Roman baths. At the southern end was the sacred quarter, with the spring and grotto. In the center was the monumental quarter, the site of the forum and public buildings.

The earliest monuments discovered in Glanum were built by the Salyens, and were strongly influenced by the Hellenic style of the nearby Greek colony of Marseille. period (2nd-beginning of the 1st century B.C.). They included a large building around trapezoidal peristyle, or courtyard surrounded by columns; and a sacred well, or dromos; next to a small temple in the Tuscan style.

• The sacred well, or dromos (end of the 2nd century B.C.. The well is It is three meters in diameter and has a stairway with thirty-seven steps which descended to the water. There is no dedication on the temple, but it probably was connected with the sacred nature of the well. The original buildings were destroyed and the well covered over during the construction of the first Roman forum on the same site during the 1st Century B.C. At the end of Antiquity the well was filled with statuary and debris from the late Roman Empire. The well has been uncovered and fragments of the walls of the temple can be seen.

• The Bouleuterion (2nd -1st centuries B.C.) was a meeting place for notables, built in the Hellenic style, with an open space with an altar in the center surrounded by stepped rows of seats on three sides. There was a portico with three columns at one end. The northern part of the Bouleuterion was cut off during Roman times by the construction of the Twin Temples, but the space was preserved and used as a Roman Curia.

• The Hellenic Fountain. A small circular stone basin from the period of Greek influence, (2nd-1st centuries B.C.), probably a fountain, stands next to the road. This is one of the oldest fountains discovered in France.