Site archéologique des Fontaines Salées

What you will see

The visit has two parts. In the discovery centre, lit panels with texts and drawings trace 4,300 years of history, and models, plans and finds from the excavations explain what people did here. Outside, you walk freely among the remains with a plan-guide, available in English, German, Dutch, Italian and Spanish, and panels along the way: the foundations of the baths and their pools, the sacred enclosure around a spring, and the ancient wooden well casings. Children aged 8 to 12 can follow a game trail on the free Guidigo app.

History

About 4,300 years ago, at the end of the Neolithic, people sank hollowed oak trunks into the sand to catch the salty water, and some of these casings are still in place. The water holds 9 to 12 grams of salt per litre, and from the Iron Age it was boiled to make salt. The Gauls built a circular sanctuary around one of the springs. After the Roman conquest a sanctuary with baths grew up here, enlarged in the 2nd century with heated rooms and an exercise court.

Invaders destroyed the baths in the second half of the 3rd century, but salt making went on in the ruins. The salt tax of the Middle Ages put an end to it, and the site disappeared under silt and earth. In 1934 the medievalist René Louis, looking for a battlefield from the epic of Girart de Roussillon, began excavating and uncovered the baths. The site was protected as a historic monument in 1936 and 1942, and a new visitor centre by the architect Jean-Paul Philippon opened in 2017.