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Origin and history

The Aiguillon Tower is an imposing Gallo-Roman building built in the first century under the Roman High Empire. This cylindrical monument, today truncated at 5 meters high, was initially much higher. Built in small calcareous bellows, it is located near a necropolis and at the crossing of two major Roman ways: the one linking Aginnum (Agen) to Burdigala (Bordeaux), and another linking Sos to Excisum. Its exact use remains uncertain: funeral, military or symbol of prestige? The 19th century excavations revealed coins dating from August to Constantine I, as well as bones and funeral urns.

Ranked as one of the first French historic monuments in 1840, the Tourasse was restored in 2001, after being liberated from a modern construction that had been burdened for more than a century and a half. It is now integrated into a public garden. The last excavations, conducted in 2018, suggest a link to a funerary complex, although its cylindrical shape, unusual for this type of monument, continues to generate debate among archaeologists. Some see it as a funerary pile, others as a building linked to an ancient habitat or a signalling post.

In Roman times, Aiguillon was a secondary agglomeration of the Civitas des Sotiates, extending at least five hectares northeast of the Tourasse. The monument occupied a strategic position, at the junction of ancient tracks and near the confluence of the Lot and the Garonne. Its limestone cladding and its stone-blocking core attached to the mortar bear witness to a solid construction, although its original crowning remains unknown. The assumptions on its function – Milestone, temple dedicated to Mercury, watchtower – reflect the diversity of possible interpretations, none being definitively validated.

La Tourasse was mentioned for the first time in 1859 by Jean Florimond Boudon de Saint-Amans in his Essay on Antiquities in the Lot-et-Garonne department, after having been mapped under the erroneous name "la Lugosse" on Cassini's map. Its early classification in 1840 underscores its heritage importance, long before modern excavations revealed its broader archaeological context. Today, it constitutes a rare vestige of Gallo-Roman architecture in the South-West, associated with an ancient old network and a necropolis whose exact extent remains to be specified.

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