Sito archeologico sottostante la chiesa di Saint-Vincent

Beneath the Romanesque parish church of Saint-Vincent lies a layered archaeological site: late Bronze Age settlement, Roman baths of the late second or early third century AD, and an early Christian burial ground. Excavated between 1969 and 1972, the remains were presented through an educational installation opened in 2012.

Why it matters

This site explains what Saint-Vincent was before it was a resort: a stopping place on the Roman road system towards Gaul, quite possibly a mansio — an official lodging tied to road transit — built around the business of hot baths. The regional archaeological authority documents a bath complex with the classic sequence of rooms on an east–west axis, extended and remodelled in late antiquity, then abandoned as the space turned funerary and, eventually, ecclesiastical. The site preserves late Bronze Age activity, Roman engineering, paleochristian tombs and a Romanesque church in successive layers. It is the stratigraphic proof of the town's thermal identity, centuries before the eighteenth-century spring made Saint-Vincent famous.

What to notice

Think in layers. The baths themselves date to the end of the second or beginning of the third century AD, laid out on an east–west axis with the customary progression of bathing rooms. Towards the end of the fourth century the complex grew northwards and eastwards, gaining an apsed room with four buttresses along its southern side. In the fifth century, as the baths fell out of use, the eastern area became a Christian burial ground, and tombs of the seventh and eighth centuries continued that funerary use. Evidence also points to an early place of worship here — likely a simple rectangular apsed hall oriented east–west, partly reusing the Roman walls. Older remains under the northern side go back to the late first century BC or early first century AD, and structures continue westwards beneath the church square. Since 2012, an educational installation has presented remains beneath the present church.

Context and history

Excavations inside the parish church took place between 1969 and 1972, as part of the restoration campaigns that also touched the Romanesque building above. The diggers brought to light the bath complex that gives the site its name, together with traces of occupation far older than Rome: the area was already settled at least from the late Bronze Age. The regional record suggests the complex may belong to a mansio serving traffic on the road towards Gaul; the town's municipal history likewise recalls a Roman thermal complex near the parish church. An identification with the ancient thermal place-name Aquae Statellae has been debated in the literature, but the official pages do not assert it, and this identification remains debated. After the baths were abandoned around the fifth century, Christian burial and worship took over the ground, and the late eleventh- or early twelfth-century Romanesque church — and later the modern church — heavily disturbed the earlier levels. A 2012 reinstallation presented the remains beneath the church for public interpretation.