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| The Mittelland |
22 July 2017
Yesterday,
after writing and swimming, I took a 90-minute train ride north to the high
valley above Lausanne. Called the Mittelland, this plateau is a great swath of
farmland that stretches between the Jura and the Alpes. I wanted to visit the ruins
of a Roman called Aventicum, Avenches. 2000 years ago, it was a city of 20,000,
with amphitheater, temples, theatre, baths and forum.
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| Amphitheater seats: modern on left, restored original on right. |
My favorite
historian of landscape, J.B. Jackson writes about the importance of ruins. Sometimes
they are reconstructed as monuments to a lost golden age. I’m not Swiss, so I
don’t know what these ruins mean to the Swiss.
Descending from the train, I
climbed up to the village. It’s high noon. Arriving at the amphitheater, I found bare-torsoed workmen applying sun-screen and building seats and stage for an August rock concert.
In the museum I admired the
replica of the golden bust of Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher, who ruled the
Empire for two decades in Aventicum’s hay-day.
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| Marcus Aurelius |
What do
these ruins mean to me? The passage of
all Empires? Avenches Tourism provided a map of the ancient city, superimposed
on the modern. The purpose of Roman city
planning seems clear: the necessities for social order and civic engagement
were planted in stone: politics, religion, entertainment and social bathing.
Those who participated were shaped by those stones. How many of the Celtic Helvetti, whom the Romans
defeated, eventually participated? Who did not participate?
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