Site archéologique de Tholon

Remains of a Gallo-Roman conurbation, Maritima Avaticorum.
The Tholon site is located in the city of Martigues, on the western shore of the Etang de Berre, about 1500 m north of the Caronte Channel and the Ile district, the historic center of the city.

Since 1998, research carried out by archaeologists from the town of Martigues in Tholon has explored or unearthed numerous remains and buildings buried in the ground or immersed in the Berre pond. This work now makes it possible to reconstruct the main stages of the occupation of one of the major sites in the history and heritage of Martigues.
There are the remains of a vast Gallo-Roman agglomeration (Maritima Avaticorum), the very leveled ruins of a 13th century chapel (known as Sainte-Trinité de Tholon), several buildings and facilities, built between the 15th and 20th centuries. century.

Occupied between the beginning of the 1st century BC. J-C. and the fourth century AD. J-C, Maritima is structured in islands of linear dwellings. They are served by a regular network of tracks, which intersect at right angles. The city is bordered to the west by the road linking in antiquity, Martigues and Salon-de-Provence. Research carried out by underwater archaeologists showed that part of the structures of the ancient city currently lay under the body of water in the pond.

The site of Tholon is also remarkable for the presence on the shore of the pond of several hydraulic constructions from the modern and contemporary periods (15th-20th centuries).

In the southern part of the site, the excavations brought to light the remains of a washhouse in its various facets: facades, floors and roofs in cut stone, cobblestone cobblestones, ceramic or cast iron supply pipes, pumping, gallery and buried cisterns. The work consists of two vaulted cisterns, built side by side on the site of a source of fresh water flowing in abundance all year round.

Further north, there are the remains of a second spring which has been fitted out in a more modest way; the Arch fountain. Installed on the very edge of the pond, it also consists of two vaulted reservoirs in which several openings allowed the drawing of water. The building of this fountain, reputed to be inexhaustible, housed a pump system upstairs supplying a small aqueduct which served the Tholon wash house.