The remains of the ancient town can be visited
Ancient BuildingAutun
Roman City Augustodunum-Janustemple
The Temple of Janus in Autun, a French city in the Saône-et-Loire department in the Burgundy region, is the ruin of a 1st-century tower located on the northern outskirts of the city.
The tower was probably built as a temple in the early days of Autun (Augustodunum) in the 1st century and dedicated to a deity unknown today. It may have been a temple of Mars, but there is no evidence for this yet. However, the fact that many Roman temples dedicated to this god were built outside the city gates supports this assumption. The temple was probably destroyed during the siege of the city by Victorinus in 269 and never rebuilt afterwards.
The tower ruin has only borne its current name, Temple of Janus, since the 16th century; previously, the structure was referred to as the Temple in the Broom Field (French: temple de la Gentoye). Used as a dwelling and quarry over the centuries, the building – with a few insignificant exceptions – already looked in the 17th century as it appears to the observer today.
Description+
The Temple of Janus was a Gallo-Roman peripteral temple, meaning a colonnade surrounded the entire structure. This colonnade is no longer preserved today, but remains of mosaics were found at the site of its floor. Of the once square tower, only wall remnants on two sides remain, at a height of 24 meters and a thickness of 2.2 meters. Its probably formerly existing ashlar cladding is missing, as is its former pyramidal roof, but the holes for the roof rafters are still visible. The remaining walls are uniformly structured on the outside by shallow niches on the ground floor and three windows on each side of the upper floor. Inside, the walls are said to have formerly shown traces of red plaster. The same applies to the inner niches: traces of painting are said to have been visible there in the past. A now no longer preserved, mosaic-covered stone block in the center of the cella could have been the pedestal for a statue of a god.
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Location: 46.9612, 4.2885