VILLAGE DE NISSAN-LEZ-ENSÉRUNE

Picturesque village fortified in a pine forest, Nissan-lez-Enserune is one of those small villages to be discovered absolutely. While strolling, the visitor will discover all the testimonies of a rich past. First of all, the Clock Tower or belfry which constitutes the entrance to Le Plô, a quadrilateral of streets which forms the ancient heart of Nissan, then, the 13th century church, the beautiful 19th century facades of the town hall, the old belfry of 1731. Outside the village there are other curiosities: two chapels of Visigothic origin, Notre-Dame-de-la-Méricorde, where the Virgin was implored to cure fevers, and Saint-Christol, the Malpas site and its tunnel, three windmills dating from the 17th and 18th centuries and the Parazols bridge.
On the neighbouring hill, the oppidum of Ensérune offers a walk to meet the ancient remains between excavations and museum. The Oppidum was probably one of the most important Gallic villages in the South of the Mediterranean. Built on a rocky promontory, it offers a 360° panoramic view of the wine-growing plain, including the dried-up pond of Montady. From the Bronze Age to the Roman conquest, the city had no less than 10,000 inhabitants! Below, the Via Domitia, which linked Rome to Spain, passed. Then in the 1st century BC, the populations abandoned the oppidum for the plains. On the site one can see the boundaries of the dwellings, large buried jars that served as a pantry and traces of the ancient necropolis. According to legend, the warlord Hannibal would have passed at the foot of the oppidum of Enserune with his elephants and several tens of thousands of men travelling from Spain to Italy, at the beginning of the second Punic War unleashed against Rome in ancient times.