Friday 13th May 2022 – Die, France

 

The tourist office provided us with a map that gave us a walk around the town centre and a walk around the walls, so we combined the two and set off. The walks had points of interest with explanations in French but, thanks to Google Translate, we were able to understand most of it.
The walls were fascinating. They were built at in the 4^th century at a time when there were serious threats to the Roman Empire from Germanic raiders. The Romans decided that they needed to build a strong defensive wall around the town and, as it came at a time when they started worshiping new deities, they demolished temples and funerary monuments to provide some of the stone for the walls. As we walked up and around the walls, there would be sections of wall that had partly collapsed. It was common to see column bases, sections of columns and large slabs of paving stones in the fill of the wall. When we reached the top of the hill, there were a group of volunteers creating a Roman camp for a Fete Gauloise that is happening this weekend. We continued our walk down the other side of the hill, back into the town and went to a restaurant on the northern side that we had spotted on the town trail. This offered a lunchtime 3-course meal for €14.90 with a main course of moules frittes, one of my favourites. It was really good food and excellent value.
We had been debating whether to leave Die after lunch or stay for another night. Staying on would allow us to see the Die Museum and go to the market in the morning. Having seen signs around the town saying that roads would be closed for the market, we came to the conclusion that it was likely to be quite big. That made the decision for us as it will almost certainly be our only opportunity to visit a French market on this trip.
We went to the museum – a wonderfully old fashioned museum with glass cabinets with shelves held up with string, almost no signs and a random collection of objects from all ages. Having said that, we really enjoyed it, especially the Prehistory room and the collection of carved and inscribed stone, mainly from Roman finds in the town.
Back to Cara then for a tea of chevre and spinach tart purchase from a wonderful French boulangerie.

Photos: An interesting doorway of an old house in Die; Looking down the Roman wall towards the town; An impressive part of the wall at the top of the hill; One of the random exhibits in the museum – no labels but I would love to know the history of the crucifix.