Shattered mythological statues turned up in a marble fountain at France’s 10-hectare Roman sanctuary

Archaeologists digging at the Saint-Martin-au-Val sanctuary in Chartres, France, have pulled fragments of statues and relief sculptures showing mythological scenes out of and around a white-marble fountain basin more than two metres deep. The pieces came from the 2026 season, the first in four years, at a Roman religious complex of more than 10 hectares that the city has been excavating for two decades.

Roman statuary is uncommon in Chartres, which makes a cache of broken figures from one spot unusual for the city as well as for the site. Nobody has yet said which myths the reliefs depict.

Broken sculpture in a basin built to hold water

The fountain sits in front of the largest building on the site, a temple dedicated to Apollo. According to HeritageDaily’s report on the city’s announcement, the central basin is square, lined in white marble, and reached from an eastern platform by steps, with a balustrade separating visitors from the water. A western opening let worshippers reach the water for ritual washing, and a drain pipe carried overflow away.

The sculpture turned up inside the basin and around its edge. The report says the pieces may once have decorated the front of the Apollo building, which looked out over the water.

Mayor Ladislas Vergne and deputy mayor for culture and heritage Véronique Domagalski described the site as an exceptional witness to the city’s past, one whose excavation keeps revealing new detail after more than 20 years of study.

The wooden ceiling that fell into the same water

The fountain was already famous among archaeologists before the statues appeared. Between 2017 and 2019, the city’s archaeology service recovered a coffered wooden ceiling from it, which the service’s site page on the sanctuary ranks among the most significant Roman-era wood finds, with only one comparable example, from Herculaneum in Italy. Fire hardened the timber before the roof collapsed, and the water-filled basin stopped the burning.

The city’s 2022 update counted roughly 1,413 pieces from that ceiling and reported two further basins about six metres apart. A France Ministry of Culture Heritage Days listing for the September 2026 guided visits now puts the total at nearly 2,300 wooden ceiling fragments. The count has grown across seasons, and the same waterlogged basin that kept the wood also received the broken sculpture.

Three different sizes for one sanctuary

The 10-hectare figure comes from the reporting on the 2026 season: a sanctuary occupying more than 10 hectares, with the monumental temple and its walkways covering almost 8. The Ministry of Culture listing rounds it to about 11 hectares and calls it the largest known ancient religious complex north of Gaul. The city’s own page is more conservative and gives 6 hectares, roughly 200 by 300 metres, for the main enclosure, whose four galleries of circulation and corner pavilions surround a courtyard of more than 4.5 hectares. An older municipal publication puts the complex at about 190 by 300 metres and the main temple at no less than 40 metres wide, so even the city’s own documents shift with the date and the boundary drawn.

The reporting does not say why the figures differ, and the likeliest reading is that the tighter one measures the walled precinct and the larger ones the wider ground around it. Construction began around 70 to 80 AD on what had been marshland, and the city dates the sanctuary as built between the late first and early second centuries. Work stopped abruptly in the middle of the second century, and the site was then used as a quarry until about 280.

Who was worshipped, and what the statues could still show

The dedication evidence is unusually direct. Fragments found near a smaller temple confirm that Diana and Apollo were both honoured here. An earlier municipal archaeology publication lists a marble bust of Diana with her quiver, pieces of Apollo statuary, and a dedication by a freedman named Paternus to a god presumed to be Apollo. Bruno Bazin of the City of Chartres archaeological service directed the major research phases from 2006, and the same publication records more than 100 human remains deposited in a large pit around 270 to 280 AD, when the complex was being demolished, a reminder that the site’s afterlife was as eventful as its use.

Mythological reliefs from the fountain would be the first sculpted narrative from the complex. The same publication describes a 655-square-metre structure beneath the Apollo building’s podium with basins, marble cladding and figurative wall paintings, so a pictorial programme in the water court would fit the decorative ambition visible everywhere else in the complex, from Corinthian capitals to blind arcading on the marble-clad walls, as the city’s 2022 update describes it.

What the pieces depict, and whether enough survives to reassemble a scene, will depend on conservation work not yet reported. For now the City of Chartres has called the sculptural decoration a major addition to knowledge of the town’s ancient heritage, and its archaeologists presented the 2026 results to visitors through September, including during European Heritage Days.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

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