Gallo-Roman Mausoleum of Faverolles

MausoleumGallia Lugdunensis · Faverolles, Haute-Marne, FranceBuilt 20 BCE

About

A limestone tower tomb rose nearly 26 meters above the road linking Langres to the Blaise valley, raised around 20 BCE for a wealthy family of the Lingones. Buried and forgotten, the ruin was rediscovered only in 1980, when excavation recovered relief carvings of gladiatorial games, life-size lions, and marine centaurs with human busts and fish tails alongside portraits of the dead. That sculpture, unmatched by any other known tomb in Roman Gaul north of Lyon, is now displayed in a museum built beside the excavated foundations.

What happened here

The tomb is built where the traffic is: on the road out of town, facing the carriageway, close enough to read at walking pace. That is the design brief. Inside there may be a single chamber for one family or niches for dozens, with cremation urns or, increasingly, bodies laid out. Outside there is a portrait, an inscription giving the dead their offices and their years, and often a bench, because visitors come back. The family returns on the anniversary and at the February festival of the dead, brings wine and food, and eats a meal at the graveside. Endowments are left to keep it up and lawsuits follow when they are not honoured. A grand tomb is the last public building a family gets to commission.