tourist office of eze - mont bastide

Mont Bastide

Local people ( Ligurian then Celto-ligurian people according to Greek and Latin, after having merged with Celts from North-East) are designed like rough, brave and good warriors in the
first century according to Diodore of Sicilia and Strabon. From the VIst century BC erected
they different four-cornered and circular structures made of big blocks : the "Castellaras".
The region counts several castellaras, but the one of Mont Bastide in the Grande Corniche
is one of the most preserved and famous because the different excavation' campaigns since the XIXth c., notably in the 50's with the commandant Octobon and then with Pascal Arnaud, history and archeology professor on roman time in the faculty of Nice, who had devoted several campaigns from 1998 to 2001.

Even if some discoveries let to believe in a very old occupancy, as maintained Octobon commandant, there is no track before the end of Bronze Age or the beginning of the Iron Age.
The Mont Bastide' castellaras was afterwards occupied continuously untill the half of the IIIrd century, then from Vth to VIst c. No charasteristic vestiges of the IVth were found. The Mont Bastide'Castellaras was a surrounded area with remparts of irregular blocks.
This rempart, well-kept untill the Succession of Austria war (1740-1748), had only one access at the protohistorical age. This gate, reworked during the imperial epoch, remains nowadays the most spectacular vestige.

Cette notice a été rédigée à partir de l'article de Pascal Arnaud "Mont-Bastide" :
Bilan de quatre campagnes, Archéam, n°9, saison 2001/2002, pp23-36. .
Voir aussi : Fighiera (Charles-Alexandre), Eze, Nice, éditions Serre, 2000, 448 p