First published: 10/09/08.

David Berlanda 0

Le Tronçon Bavay-Tongres De La Chaussée Romaine Bo

Le tronçon Bavay-Tongres de la chaussée romaine Bo (On tentative list)

Le tronçon Bavay-Tongres de la chaussée romaine Bo by David Berlanda

I put quite a lot effort in finding out which is the best place to visit this section of the roman road. According to the tentative list database description, the only monuments visible along it are the tumuli and I found out that they are located mainly in the Hesbaye territory and in the end I chose to visit two of them called Sun Tombs of Ambresin and the one of Moxhe.

However when we arrived at Ambresin we noticed that the roman road practically doesn't exist anymore and that instead of it there is just a network of modern paths and asphalt roads that are individually often called "Roman Road" passing exactly where once it was located on all its extension; in addition to this I had made a mistake in the identification of the precise position of the Sun Tombs so we didn't find them where I expected them to be but just tried to find them driving along the Roman Road eastwards. In this manner we arrived accidentally to the tumulus of Moxhe before and without having found them. It was located exactly where I had though (200 metres eastwards from the crossroad of N69, that is called the Roman Road, and the N80) but how disappointing! Just a small fenced mound surrounded by grazing cows and covered by trees of which you couldn't ever say it was a tumulus without being aware of it before. Obviously that was enough for us!!!

This is a typical TL site with no chance to get inscribed on the list: it seems that the entire roman road is in these conditions and I would certainly say that it has no authenticity and is of very limited importance. Actually there are not roman roads on the WHL and this is probably a big gap. However it is not easy to find one that is well preserved and I think that the only one that can be inscribed on the list because it has a long section in good conditions with important monuments along it is the Via Appia to the south of Rome. In alternative it would be possible to candidate the most important preserved sections of roman roads in a transboundary serial site as is being done for the Frontiers of the Roman Empire for the same civilization or similarly to the planned WH candidature of the Main Andean Road regarding a different civilization but the same type of site (road network).

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