The Roman Roads of Languedoc

New excavations at La Nautique, september 2012
A little to the west of La Nautique, before the Pointe de Brunet, the archeologists have discovered a great Roman leisure centre!  It was however, privately owned and wealthy Romans entertained their guests there.
   

The day before, preliminary work was still going on before being open to the public the next day.  You can see from the aerial photos that it was known something was there since 1958.
  Here's a map which clearly shows La Nautique in Roman times.

  Les Capelles is to the top left.  You can also see the mole, discovered by ANTEAS and the great warehouses, the site where we visited and found a Roman wall.  This was a great centre for distribution and trading; they packed the oysters into amphores and also bought and sold the famous sigillée pottery, for literally thousands of broken bowls and tableware were found.  One can imagine the wealthy owners relaxing at Les Capelles at the end of the business day.
 
Les Capelles, sometimes called Lac des Capelles, consisted of a huge circular pool with an island in the centre of it.  You can see above the stone walls with holes so that the water from the étang could enter - and the fish.  The aristocratic Romans would walk on pathways above the water, and then eat the fish they had chosen, seated on the island in the centre of the lake.
 
  The archeologists told us that there does not exist, anywwhere in the Roman Empire, a place or a "pleasure park" anything like Lac des Capelles at Narbonne.  This proves that Narbonne was the equivalent of a Gallic Rome, an incredibly rich town, the home of the aristocracy and the emperors such as Pompey, Julius Caesar, and Augustus.

  When I first came to this region, La Nautique was considered just a quiet little place; now all the discoveries on the étang, including at Castelas, imply that the whole inland sea was a great port serving all the Roman Empire from Narbonne.