Chiragan Roman villa

About

The Roman villa Chiragan was a Roman villa in the commune of Martres-Tolosane in the Haute-Garonne department of France. It was occupied until the end of the Roman Empire and its exceptional character is linked to the rich marbles exhumed during the successive excavations, since the first discoveries in the seventeenth century and especially since the excavations carried out by Alexandre Du Mège from 1826 to 1830. By its importance it was, according to some archaeologists of the site, including Léon Joulin, the most important villa in Europe after the villa of Hadrian.

The sculpted elements discovered, of major importance, now adorn the Musée Saint-Raymond de Toulouse, which has thanks to them the most important collection in France of busts of Roman emperors, after that of the Louvre Museum. Copies of the works discovered were placed in a museum in the commune of his discovery. It is the archaeological museum of Martres-Tolosane, located in a medieval dungeon of the early 13th century on the city tower.

The works, by their richness and their thematic unity, complicate the interpretation of the villa and the identification of the owner...