Bibracte, the mysterious Gallic city reveals its secrets

2024-07-26 13:36:08

The site, discovered in the 19th century, benefited from a large-scale research program where scientists were trying to make the invisible visible.

Special Reporter to Bibracte

When you walk on the heights of Mont Beuvray, straddling Nièvre and Saône-et-Loire in the Morvan national park, it is difficult to imagine that 2000 years ago one of the Celtic capitals stood here. Forests have completely taken over the land and yet, for forty years, archaeologists have been discovering the remains of Bibracte, this oppidum which spanned over two centuries across the Gallic world.

But to tell the story of this place, and its inhabitants, scientists have few sources. And all the more because most of the Gallic constructions, made of wood or earth, have completely disappeared. Their trail is reduced to the mark they leave on the ground. The search for this ancient earth is based on a specific discipline: space exploration. A science where the hole often has much more to tell than the stone. Science where every problem…

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