Des eaux jaillissantes aux rejets d’immondices

Abstract

Encompassing harnessed spring water and drainage towards the river Vienne, and including the city’s fountains, Limoges is characterised by its vast underground water network which accompanied the growth of the city from antiquity and developed its ramifications during medieval and modern times. As well as its scale, this network is also remarkable for the rich documentation it has left, which is an invitation to examine its historic contours: data on regulations from consular archives, iconographical sources and maps from the modern period, but also archaeological evidence collated by the ArchéA association on Limoges’s underground networks. The confrontation of this different source material sheds light on problematics of hygiene in the medieval and the modern city and gives information about the material existence of public infrastructures such as aqueducts, fountains and drains. But it also gives information about private and domestic hygiene, based on evidence found in some of the city’s old buildings.

Keywords

• medieval architecture
• modern architecture
• fountains
• aqueduct
• cellar
• latrines