Guided
Hiking

The Roman road

The Roman road which passes near the mausoleum coming from Langres « Andemantunum » was an important intersection at that time. It breaks off from the Langres-Reims road, replacing a Gallic road which linked the capital cities of the Lingons and Remes passing through Bar-sur-Aube.

The road going through Faverolles probably continues North-North West towards Châlons-en-Champagne and Reims passing via Chaumont, the valley of Blaise and Vitry-le-François.

Mostly preserved underneath the forest debris, hundreds of metres of the road before you have been cleared. We can still distinguish on either side, the ditch and embankment bordering it.

The techniques used for constructing roads adapted to the ground and to the local resources available.

Here, once the scale of the road was determined, the vegetation was scraped down to the soil and thrown on the sides. Two lateral ditches were dug up probably throwing away movable matter from the centre. The curved path was then paved with blocks of hard limestone which came from nearby small open quarries. The stones were set like spikes, to insure a greater stability and blocked laterally by bigger stones. On the exterior embankments small walls were built to limit the scale of the road. Finally, a fine layer of gravel finished off and flattened the surface. Originally, the road was not as chaotic as we see today because time, traffic and roots of trees have changed its appearence.

Twenty centuries later..., look at the holes in the road, proof that the passage of ancient wheels was frequent and imagine the awe of passers-by in front of the sumptuous mausoleum.

Now, follow the marked out road. You will then leave it to reach the stone quarries which are further up in the forest.