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| Beautiful landscape and walks around Alesia. This is about 3 km from the port of Venarey-les-Laumes |
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| The only bits of the Gallo-Roman town that are standing, but have they put them together correctly? |
2000 years ago Alesia was a battleground between Vercingetorix the elected leader of the united Gaulish tribes and the Roman general Julius Caesar.
Vercinetorix had been successful in previous skirmishes, but this was the big one with 10's of thousands of troops involved.
Unfortunately Vercingetoric was outwitted by Caesar even though he had the greater army. Caesar laid seige to the hilltop town of Alesia building massive fortifications around it to starve them out. He also built another set of fortifications facing outwards to fend of re-enforcements.
The Gauls had had their chips, and Vercingetorix was captured, held prisoner in Rome for the next 5 years and then strangled. What an ignominius end, I wonder if he would have considered it worth it as he (the loser) is the one immortalised in a massive statue on the hill.
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| The Gallo-Roman town at the tope of Alesia. We left our bikes at the bottom of the hill.
I took a walk through the woods to try and find some of Caesar's camps - or course, what else would I do!
 There were some large structures in the woods, and also a huge rock, but the hillside was too steep to climb up to it.   |
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| Woods and Caesar's Camp in distance |
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