Glanum Roman Ruins
— what the centuries did not bury.
Not only on a wall.
“The Salyes built a sanctuary at the spring first, the Greeks of Massalia visited and traded, and then the Romans built a town over the top of it all. Two monuments stood above ground for two millennia at the southern entrance, the Mausoleum of the Julii and a triumphal arch, while the rest of Glanum slowly went under. Excavation began in 1921. The houses and the forum are out again now, and the paved street the Romans walked is open underfoot. The Alpilles hold the heat. The cicadas don't stop. Van Gogh painted on the asylum grounds across the road, the year before he died.
Glanum Roman Ruins, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
The place, in three passes.
Glanum lies one kilometre south of Saint-Rémy-de-Provence in the Bouches-du-Rhône department, at the northern foot of the Alpilles massif. The site occupies a narrow valley opening onto the Provençal plain, with the limestone cliffs of the Alpilles rising directly behind it. Founded as a sanctuary of the Celto-Ligurian Salyes around the 6th century BC and developed under successive Greek and Roman influence, the town grew around a sacred spring dedicated to the healing god Glanis, from whom it took its name. It was destroyed during the Alemanni incursions of 260 AD, never rebuilt, and the ruins were slowly buried. Systematic excavation began in 1921 under the architect Jules Formigé and continues today under the Centre des monuments nationaux.
Two monuments stood continuously above ground while the rest of Glanum disappeared: the Mausoleum of the Julii, raised around 40-30 BC, and the Triumphal Arch from the early first century AD, known together as Les Antiques. The mausoleum stands roughly eighteen metres tall and carries some of the finest sculpted relief in southern Gaul, with battle and hunting scenes wrapping its base. The arch is among the oldest surviving in Roman Gaul and shows chained captives beneath garland-draped panels. The town behind them is built of pale local limestone, the same stone you see in the cliff villages of Les Baux. The Hellenistic-style houses near the spring are unusual this far west, suggesting Greek-trained masons were at work in the late second century BC.
The site is managed by the Centre des monuments nationaux and opens daily except for January 1, May 1, and December 25. The standard route enters from the south past Les Antiques, then follows the paved decumanus through the residential quarter, the forum, the baths, and the sacred spring at the head of the valley. Two hours is enough for an unhurried walk. The monastery of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole, where Vincent van Gogh was a voluntary patient from May 1889 to May 1890, sits directly across the road from the entrance and can be combined into one afternoon. Saint-Rémy-de-Provence is one kilometre north. The mistral can scour the valley in winter; spring and early autumn are kinder for slow wandering.