More Precisions on How the Chart of the Castrum of Dijon at The Carolingian Times was Made

That illustration of the castrum of Dijon by the Carolingian times was made by us as we took the basic data for from 'Histoire de Dijon', under the direction of P. Gras, Privat Editions, 1987, France. Such data are reflecting too the text of the page. Let's give, here, some more precisions about the choices we made concerning that representation

• the Carolingian castrum of Dijon is circled with a dich, which is feed through the small torrential-regimed rivers flowing from the North. Some dams and vanes, northeast, allow either to send the waters through the river which keeps flowing through the city, or to the ditch. Once freed back through some other vanes southeast, those waters are feeding mills
• the castrum has been represented with the thirty-three towers like described by Gregory of Tours as both main doors are found southeast, there where the route from the Saône to the Seine rivers is arriving, and northwest there where it is departing. The road coming from the Lyon countries is passing West, in the borough as, North of the city, it allows to journey to Langres, or to the Rhine countries via Gray. The style of the walls likely remained one of the Low Roman empire, with cylindrical towers pierced with arched windows looking like those which may be found, for example, at the Aurelian Wall in Rome, or in Trier, Germany. It might that some location of the walls have endured some modification or upgrades by the Carolingian era as it is grossly remaining like it had been constructed
• the Saône-Seine rivers routes is crossing through the city, inside the castrum. We figured our hypothesis concerning that the cardo and the decumanus, those both axis characterizing any Roman town, were located, before the castrum was built, there where the road from the Saône to the Seine rivers was crossing the North-South road, which is northwest of the castrum. There, thus, likely were located the forum, the temple dedicated to the Capitoline triad and maybe too a theater or amphitheater. It looks like that, when the castrum was constructed, all that part of the city was abandoned and, in the case of Dijon, destroyed as the stones served to build the walls; we also hypothetized that some form of a central square inside the castrum might have been reconstructed at the crossway between both main ways inside -as it is figured on our chart with a void. We too hypothetized that in each such urban areas delimited by the intersection was featuring, like usually the case in a Roman city, housing aligned unto a quadrillage. It might that, by the Carolingian times, which were 500 years after the castrum had been built, some simple houses of the Roman times had survived as some elaborated ones or some commercial buildings had too. It might too that, by the entrance door for the trade route, southeast of the castrum, some buildings for the traders' use had been conserved, with those either keeping with their same role of warehouses or customs, or affected to new functions
• housing inside the castrum, on the other hand, include by the time of the drawing houses of a Frankish type with earthened walls and a chaulm roof. In that urban space at last, some areas have become gardens or fields. The cathedral quarters are well seen northeast, with the cathedral church, the baptistery and a smaller church dedicated to the Virgin Mary
• outside the walls, West, is lying the first borough which was associated with the castrum as the southern route is crossing there, coming from Beaune. We made that choice to figure Roman-like housing in the part of the borough which is closer to the castrum as we laid down Frankisk houses on the other side of the road
• more West still, in the area of the former Roman cemetery, one can see the basilica and abbey dedicated to St. Benignus (above), the two churches dedicated to Ste. Paschasie and Ste. Florida as, below, the basilica which the bishops of Langres constructed like their burial place. The borough which built along have been drawn with Frankish-type houses only. That area is defended too with a ditch. The Ouche River is flowing outside the chart, to the lower left
• as far as the countryside is concerned, we have extrapolated modern days data as we hypothetized that, by that time, the contemporary landscapes were coming up to close to the castrum, with bushes and meadows South, forests, isolated trees, or orchards East, and orchards North and northwest, with some more woods in that latter case. We also swiftly figured cultural areas as associated to the city's populations, with fields cultivated by the inhabitants of the abbey's or city's borough or by those of the castrum itself. No wineyards are figured as they are located farther West or East on some heights. Later in the Middle Ages, the agricultural activity of Dijon mostly will be about vinery, with the wineyarders living in the boroughs of St-Pierre, South, and St-Philibert, close to the abbey of St-Benignus)
• both trade routes which are extant still by that time are also displayed as they are crossing outside the castrum northwestern door

Dijon, at the Carolingian times, really looked like a powerful castrum, with its 30-ft tall and 15-ft wide walls which likely presented a strong interest both in terms of trade anymore and of the military