On August 1st of the year 12 BC, Drusus, son-in-law of Emperor Augustus, inaugurated in Condate, at the foot of the Croix-Rousse hill near Lugdunum, the federal sanctuary of the Three Gauls, an imposing altar intended to celebrate the cult of Rome and the emperor in front of all the Gallic peoples.
An altar surrounded by the sixty peoples of Gaul
Around this imposing altar, galleries host delegates sent by sixty Gallic tribes every year on August 1st to perform imperial worship, but also to discuss political affairs concerning all the Gallic provinces. The names of these sixty tribes are engraved on the tiers surrounding the monument, making this place both a religious space and a unique center of political representation for the conquered populations.
This system was part of the Roman policy of integrating the Gallic elites, which associated the imperial cult with a form of collective representation, without challenging Rome's authority over these recently pacified territories.
An amphitheater that witnessed the first Christian martyrs
Seven years after the sanctuary's inauguration, an amphitheater was built in the immediate vicinity. It was in this amphitheater of the Three Gauls that, several decades later, the first Christian martyrs of Gaul, including Saint Blandina and Saint Pothinus, victims of Roman repression against the Christian communities of Lugdunum, would be thrown to the beasts.
Today, no visible trace of the original sanctuary or amphitheater remains, their memory surviving only through a few pictorial evocations engraved on Roman coins of the time.
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