Orange. Descriptions & Excursions.

Orange is a small city with 29 thousand inhabitants in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d' Azur region in France, about 21 km north of Avignon. Grandiose ruins of Roman times are UNESCO listed.

Orange was named by the Gauls Arausion after one of the Celtic gods. Under Augustus, it became one of the most flourishing centres of Roman Provence. It was actually the capital of a wide area of northern Provence, which was parcelled up into lots for the Roman colonists. "Orange of two thousand years ago was a miniature Rome, complete with many of the public buildings that would have been familiar to a citizen of the Roman Empire, except that the scale of the buildings had been reduced – a smaller theatre to accommodate a smaller population, for example". It is found in both the Tabula Peutingeriana and Le cadastre d'Orange maps.

In the 5th century, the city of Orange was plundered by the Visigoths.

Since the XI century - an independent county, and then the principality of Orania, which in 1530 passed to the Dilenburg branch of the Nassau house. Representatives of the Nassau-Orange House, being stadtholders of the Netherlands, de jure retained possession of Orange until the death of childless William III in 1702.

According to the results of the Utrecht Peace, Orange was awarded to France (de facto owning the city since 1660), but the senior prince of the House of Nassau retained the title of Prince of Orange, which is still the heir to the crown of the Netherlands.

The semicircular theater in Arausion has no equal in terms of its state of preservation: the rear wall is more than 100 meters long, in the central niche there is a statue of Emperor Augustus 370 cm high.The Triumphal Arch 19 meters high with reliefs glorifying the victories of Julius Caesar is one of the most colossal monuments that kind.

More informations You can find at the Official site of Orange Tourism.