Autun

• 1. Introduction

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  Autun's population today is about 13,000. In Roman times, by different estimates, that same city may have held anywhere between 30,000 and 100,000 people. It sits in the Saône-et-Loire department of Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, in central-eastern France. Between the Roman era and now, emperors, Frankish kings and a raiding army from al-Andalus all found reason to march through its gates. What was Autun originally built to do? Why did a lawyer in Autun once make his name defending a group of rats in court? And why does one of the town's churches carry the name of one of the only medieval sculptors anyone can identify?

• 2. A Capital For The Aedui

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  Emperor Augustus founded Augustodunum during the Principate era of the early Roman Empire, naming the settlement after himself. The Aedui, a Continental Celtic people, needed a Roman capital of their own, and Augustodunum became it. They had been allies, even called brothers or fratres, of Rome since before Julius Caesar's Gallic Wars. Rome designated the new city as their civitas, a tribal capital. It was a planned replacement for the Aedui's old political center, the oppidum of Bibracte, roughly 25 kilometers away.

  By late antiquity, Autun had built a reputation for its schools of rhetoric. One of those schools displayed, in its portico, a world map based on Ptolemy's Geography, a map well known for its size. That map may have survived all the way into early modern times, long after the schools themselves had faded from prominence.

  Rome's peace would not last forever. Within a few centuries, the walls that Augustus's engineers built would face their first real test.

• 3. Sieges Across The Centuries

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  In AD 356, a force of Alemanni laid siege to Autun, and the city's walls were in such disrepair that it risked falling. Emperor Julian arrived and saved the city, in one of his early military successes.

  In 532, the Merovingian kings Childebert I and Chlothar I fought the Battle of Autun, defeating the Burgundians under King Godomar and seizing their country for the Franks. In 642 or 643, another battle broke out near Autun, this time between feuding Frankish noblemen.

  In 725, the Umayyad Caliphate's expansion into Gaul reached Autun directly, when the governor Anbasa ibn Suhaym al-Kalbi led a raiding army from al-Andalus up the Rhône and Saône valleys. His forces captured and sacked the city, part of a broader campaign that struck several Burgundian towns. The raid showed how far Andalusi forces could reach into Francia's interior, before Frankish resistance consolidated later in the eighth century.

  Autun's German occupation ended in a particularly bloody fight in early September 1944. Resistance fighters trying to liberate the town lost about 80 of their own. In the months before, German forces had destroyed several villages nearby, especially in the Morvan, a Resistance stronghold. Germany's forces there surrendered unconditionally on the 10th of September 1944, three days before American troops reached Autun on the 13th of September.

  Warfare was not the only force shaping Autun's fortunes. Its bishops and counts would leave marks of their own, sometimes at great personal cost.

• 4. Bishops And Counts

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  Léger, born around 616, served as bishop of Autun until his death in 678. Ebroin, the Mayor of the Palace, ordered him tortured and killed in Lucheux, in the Somme. Around 670, he had presided over the second council of Autun, following an earlier council in 599 convened by Bishop Syagre.

  In 880, Count Richard of Autun became the first Duke of Burgundy. Roughly a century earlier, Nivelon I, who died in 768, had held the title of Count of Autun. Late in the ninth century, a daughter of Charles Martel, named in different records as Auda, Alane or Aldana, married Thierry IV, also known as Theoderich or Theoderic, then Count of Autun. When Robert the Strong died, the countship stood vacant until it passed to Bernard Plantapilosa, son of Bernard of Septimania. It later passed again, to Bernard of Gothia, after Bernard fell out of favor. In 878, King Louis the Younger stripped the countship from its holder and handed it instead to his own chamberlain, Theodoric.

  In 1788, Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord became bishop of Autun. The next year, he was elected to represent the clergy at the Estates-General of 1789.

  The buildings Autun left behind, from Roman ruins to a cathedral built for pilgrims, would carry the town's reputation long after these rulers were gone.

• 5. Stone And Sacred Mystery

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  Two ancient Roman gates, the Porte Saint-André and the Porte d'Arroux, still stand in Autun alongside other ruins from the age of Augustus. With a capacity of 17,000 seats, the ancient theatre ranked among the largest in the western Roman Empire.

  Northwest of the city stands the so-called Temple of Janus, of which only two walls, or faces, survive. To the southeast sits the Pierre de Couhard, a rock pyramid whose original purpose remains uncertain, though it may date back to Roman times.

  Autun Cathedral, also called Saint Lazare Cathedral, dates from the early twelfth century and stands as a major example of Romanesque architecture. It served formerly as the chapel of the Dukes of Burgundy, whose palace doubled as the actual episcopal residence. The cathedral was built originally as a pilgrimage church, to house the venerated relic of Saint Lazarus. The Gospels describe Lazarus as considered the first bishop of Marseille. Tradition holds that he arrived in Provence together with Mary Magdalene.

  Étienne de Bâgé, Autun's bishop in the twelfth century, most likely built the church to answer the construction of Ste. Madeleine at nearby Vézelay. Vézelay was home to the French cult of Mary Magdalene. Saint Lazare was only later elevated to cathedral rank, replacing an earlier cathedral dedicated to Saint Nazaire.

  The cathedral is famous above all for its sculpture, particularly the tympanum of the Last Judgment above the west portal. Fragments from the lost north transept portal also survive. Along with the capitals carved in the nave and choir, they are traditionally credited to Gislebertus, a sculptor whose name appears on the west tympanum. Whether Gislebertus names the sculptor or a patron remains uncertain. If he was in fact the artist, he counts among the very few medieval sculptors whose name survives at all.

  Not every legend attached to Autun involves stone. Some involve courtrooms, painters and novelists instead.

• 6. Rats Painters And Novelists

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  In 1506, Barthélemy de Chasseneuz began practicing law in Autun, and two years later became crown attorney of the Autun bailliage. He built his reputation as a criminal lawyer, defending a group of rats put on trial for destroying the region's barley crop.

  Nicolas Rolin, Chancellor of Burgundy under Philip the Good, came from Autun, and examples of his artistic patronage still stand in the town. The Rolin Madonna, painted by Jan van Eyck and held today in the Louvre, shows a background probably meant to represent Autun.

  Autun serves as the main setting for James Salter's 1967 novel A Sport and a Pastime.

  Long after Chasseneuz's rats and Rolin's altarpieces, Autun would find a very different kind of fame, underground.

• 7. From Oil Shale To Nexans

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  In 1837, commercial mining of an oil shale deposit near Autun marked the start of the modern oil-shale industry. That made Autun a pioneer of the Industrial Revolution in the nineteenth century, alongside the early exploitation of fluorine deposits nearby. In 1852, prospectors near Autun discovered a uranium mineral that was then named autunite, after the town itself.

  During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, Giuseppe Garibaldi, leading the Army of the Vosges, chose Autun as his headquarters.

  Napoleon gave the Lycée Bonaparte its current name, and his brothers Joseph and Lucien both studied there. The school still operates today. Its decorated wrought iron gates, erected in 1772, display representations of the subjects once taught, arranged along the top of the grids. Autun today is also home to one of France's six military high schools, the Lycée militaire d'Autun.

  Since the 20th century, Autun has found renewed dynamism as headquarters to international companies including Dim and Nexans.

  That mix of underground minerals and modern corporate headquarters sits on ground shaped long before any of them arrived, ground that still draws visitors today.

• 8. Land Climate And Visitors

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  Autun rests on the southern edge of the Permian Autun Basin, a depression that includes the Autunian stratotype forming the Autunois region. Bocage meadows with a wide mesh border the city to the north. The Morvan massif rises to the west. Deciduous forest covering a sandstone plateau, known as the domanial forest of Planoise, stretches south. The wider Autunois region is made up of 64 communes across seven cantons. Antully, Auxy, Curgy, Dracy-Saint-Loup, Monthelon, Saint-Forgeot and Tavernay sit within the cantons of Autun-Nord and Autun-Sud.

  Between 1971 and 2000, Autun's average annual temperature was 10.5°C, with an annual range of 16.6°C. Average yearly precipitation over that period reached 1,061 millimeters, falling across 12.1 days in January and 7.6 days in July. Between 1991 and 2020, the local weather station recorded an average annual temperature of 10.7°C and average annual precipitation of 857.2 millimeters. That station recorded a high of 40°C on the 12th of August 2003, and a low of minus 18.3°C on the 20th of December 2009.

  Autun's best-known museum, the Musée Rolin, houses the town's historical artistic collections. Nearby, tourists can also visit the Arboretum de Pézanin, one of the richest forest collections in France. The Rock of Solutré and Cluny Abbey, with its medieval town, lie within reach too. Further afield lie Charolles, known for the bœuf charolais, along with Mâcon and Paray-le-Monial.

  The European Triathlon Championships came to Autun in 2006. The Fifth Stage of the 2007 Tour de France also finished in the town, with riders entering along a twisting, winding descent from a nearby mountain.

  Autun maintains sister-city ties with four towns abroad: Ingelheim am Rhein in Germany since 1963, Stevenage in the United Kingdom since 1975, Kawagoe in Japan since 2002, and Arévalo in Spain since 2005. That list keeps growing decades after Ingelheim am Rhein became the first partner town, with Arévalo the most recent addition so far.