NYON Apart from having left Switzerland with an exceptional archaeological legacy, the ancient Romans are also a reminder for both Swiss and EU citizens of just how culturally diverse and open to trade and migration their empire was.
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“I don’t wish to romanticise, but Roman society was incredibly mixed with Romans, Greeks, Berbers, Frisians, Helvetics, Gauls…,” said Véronique Rey-Vodoz, curator of the Roman Museum located in the remnants of a first-century-AD basilica in Nyon, one of Switzerland’s most important Roman colonies.
“The Romans knew how to manage this huge region from the Balkans to North Africa. Colonia Iulia Equestris – with its administrators, soldiers, traders, mercenaries, farmers, slaves, fishermen – was very much a microcosm of this diversity,” she added, using Nyon’s old Roman name. Also known as Noiodunum, the colony was founded between 50 and 44 BC for retired cavalry officers. But Julius Caesar also wanted to open – and protect – the crucial Rome to Gaul trade route through the Alps.
As amply illustrated by its museum, Nyon saw its heyday as a bustling commercial, administrative and legal centre in the first century AD. While trade had flourished well before the Romans, lake barges transported goods, such as olive oil from southern France, cereals from Spain, or wines from Greece. Similar to other Roman towns, Nyon had its forum, temple, and amphitheatre, the latter discovered on a construction site in 1996.
While Roman Switzerland may not offer as many well-preserved monuments as France or Italy, it does lend exceptional insight into how the Romans lived. Most Swiss ruins are in the countryside and easily accessible to archaeological shovels and brushes. Some 5,000 Mediterranean amphora and 4,000 garbage remains found in Augst (Augusta Raurica) near Basel, indicated that it was the Romans who discovered Nouvelle Cuisine.
By sifting through household wastes, one could determine eating habits. Switzerland’s original inhabitants, the Celts, lived off the land and cooked with animal fat. Under the Romans, they started using olive oil and embraced other customs. During the three-century existence of Augusta Raurica, 12 generations of townsfolk consumed a variety of victuals, notably oysters, dates, fish, snails, starlings, frogs, blackbirds and hares. They also indulged in empire-wide import and export.
Other sites, such as Avenches (Aventicum), a provincial capital of 20,000, or Martigny (Octodurus) in the Rhone Valley, also reveal a golden age: mosaics, baths, fortified walls, roads, canals and even central heating. Excavations are constantly ongoing, detailing more and more how the Romans lived, worked and traded. Even today, a dark, nutty loaf in the Valais is known as “Roman bread”.
With much of Nyon’s past concealed by urban infrastructure, noted Rey-Vodoz, “we can only surmise how the city developed – and succumbed.” What is known is that Roman farms, villages and villas extended along the lake and into the Pays de Gex with an aqueduct channelling water from the springs of Divonne. By the second century AD, however, Geneva had become the main city. While Nyon was gradually abandoned and its buildings destroyed, its Roman influence remains.
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