Timeline

Heritage classified

Key figures

Origin and history

The Gallo-Roman villa of Chassey-lès-Montbozon, located in Haute-Saône, is a vestige of a Sequane rural settlement built around the first century. It was discovered in the 19th century, but it was only between 1991 and 1995 that systematic excavations at the Pre-Guillemin site revealed its exceptional extent: 30 to 40 hectares in the Ognon valley. The site, organised around a peristyle courtyard and equipped with a monumental pool of 60 meters long, includes rooms heated by hypocaust, showing a high level of comfort for the time.

The excavations revealed objects and architectural elements today exposed to the Jean-Léon Gérôme museum in Vesoul. The villa is distinguished by its complex plan, atypical for the region, and its main building in U, whose exact function remains unknown. The site, owned by the commune, was listed as historic monuments on 12 February 2002, protecting the remains on plots ZC 110 to 117.

The rural establishment illustrates the Gallo-Roman occupation in Séquania, a region marked by progressive Romanization and a structured agricultural organization. The Sequanes, a Gallic people integrated into the Roman Empire, developed villas combining agricultural exploitation and aristocratic residence. The presence of a hypocauste and a basin suggests a high social status of the occupants, while the dispersal of buildings on a vast estate reflects a diversified rural economy, typical of the Roman countryside between the 1st and 3rd centuries.

The discoveries of Chassey-lès-Montbozon are part of a wider network of Gallo-Roman sites in Franche-Comté, like the nearby Paleo-Christian church. Their study, documented in books such as the Gallo-Roman Rural Establishment of Chassey-lès-Montbozon (Barbet & Gandel, 1998), sheds light on the dynamics of Roman settlement in eastern Gaul, between cultural integration and the persistence of local traditions.

External links