GALLO-ROMAN THEATER OF OLD POITIERS

At the confluence of the Vienne and Clain rivers, on the site of Vieux-Poitiers, once stood a Gallo-Roman city of undisputed importance. The tower is the last vestige of the theater, one of the largest in Gaul (116 meters in diameter!). Imagine 10,000 spectators coming to watch gladiatorial combat, tragedy and comedy. This Gallo-Roman theater, the heart of the city, dates back to the ^1st century AD. Around this monument, you'll find evidence of the city's intense life: a well-designed grid of streets, houses, temples and a crafts district with potters' kilns and shops. The city covered an area of 80 hectares and may have had as many as 4,000 inhabitants. The whole complex was situated along the Poitiers-Tours Roman road, a key location for trade and commerce with the rest of the Roman Empire. Its decline came in the ^2nd century, when it fell victim to a fire. However, the site was reoccupied from time to time until the early Middle Ages. In 742, the sons of Charles Martel signed a treaty here to divide up the province of Aquitaine. The fatal blow seems to have come in the ^9th or ^10th century, during the Viking invasions. However, the destruction of Old Poitiers by the Normans remains a hypothesis, which would fit in quite well with the foundation, a little further north, of the defensive castle of Airaud (^9th century), the future Châtellerault.