Orange

Wednesday, May 30th was another hot and sunny day. We planned to stop in the city of Orange to see the Roman amphitheater. Rick Steves' tourist guide explains that Orange was "founded as a comfortable place for Roman army officers to enjoy their retirement." Even then "professional military men retired with time for a second career. Did the emperor want thousands of well-trained, relatively young guys hanging around Rome?" It was much safer to have them living in France.

We walked past the fountain, around a corner and up a slight hill to find the remains of the Temple to the Cult of the Emperor. I leaned my walking sticks against the iron fencing so I could hold the camera inside the bars for a better picture. Suddenly I heard clackety clack...my sticks were inside the bars and well out of reach!

Thankfully, an agile employee managed to retrieve them.




What looks like a short tower in the center of the picture above is actually the side of the stage area below.

Every spectacle was dedicated to the emperor whose statue watches over all. Apparently the Romans practiced mass production before Henry Ford produced the Model T in any color you wanted as long as you wanted black. The Romans mass produced the statues of the emperor with pop-off heads. When a new emperor took over, they would mass-produce new heads for all the statues throughout their empire!

The theater was built to hold 10,000 people.

Part of the reason this theater survived after the Romans left France is because it was used, used as a fortress, as a prison, and even as a fortified city.

People even built their houses right into the walls of the theater! There are rough alcoves off to the sides of this walkway. We could see where stones on opposite walls had been removed to hold up a rafter or crossbeam.

Both the picture above and the one to the right were taken on an upper level. From this one you can get an idea of the depth of the structural wall area.

There are only 3 Roman theaters that still have their acoustic wall, the back wall of the stage, and this one in Orange is not only the best preserved, it is also the only one in Europe.

According to Rick Steves, the "Roman Theater was all part of the 'give them bread and circuses' approach to winning the support of the masses (not unlike today's philosophy of 'give them tax cuts and American Idol')." 

As Rome became more and more corrupt, it must have taken more effort to mollify the masses because the number of spectacles produced each year grew from 65 days to 180.

Today this theater is not just a tourist site. It is also being used for concerts and operas and such.

It was late afternoon by the time we left Orange and headed north again.

We missed the last turn off the highway and had to go all the way to Tournus.

 By then I was delighted to get on the slower paced country roads. We were too tired to want to cook dinner so as dusk melted into darkness we enjoyed a meal at the Auberge, or inn, in Blanot. 

As we turned to drive up the hill we spotted Elisabeth enjoying the night air at her window while talking on the phone so we paused long enough to let her know we had made it home.