Commercial buildings in Lugdunum and Vienna: between Roman models and local specificities (1st century BC-3rd century AD)

Résumé En

Retail trade shaped profoundly the ancient city, especially through the buildings that hosted sales and production activities and that became part of the street networks and the urban plots. If the shops (tabernae), as places dedicated to commercial transactions, seem to be characterised by their multi-functionality (sales, production, storage, etc.), they are also defined by the adoption of a regular plan that is largely open to the main thoroughfares. They can be either integrated with other constructed units or form independent complexes with an explicit economic purpose.Architectural models, particularly observed in the Vesuvian cities or in Ostia for example (to quote only the most recent studies, see Monteix 2010, Schoevaert 2018, Ellis 2018), seem to apply to the commercial premises of the Roman world and to spread, stimulated by the modular and standardised shape of the taberna. Archaeological data from the urban contexts of Roman Gaul provide a particularly rich corpus of street-side or house-front shop lines, which find consistent parallels elsewhere in the Roman world. However, the precise and diachronic study of the commercial landscape of the roman colonies of Lugdunum and Vienna, whose economic role within the long-distance trade networks of the Rhone Valley is well known, has made it possible to highlight local particularities in the design of the commercial buildings, the layout of the shops inside and their architectural developments.Beyond the application of models — which will also be discussed —, what criteria can explain these local choices? To what extent can the role of topography and the traditions of domestic architecture, which are closely linked to shops, be considered? What consequences for commercial practices, ownership and management of the workplace can these different forms of commercial buildings bring? Specific attention will be paid to the layout of the shops, their access points as well as their storeys and their integration into the urban blocks. This paper will rely on the results of a current dissertation on retail trade in the Rhone Valley between the 1st century BC and the 3rd century AD.