In 2023, work to extend the Port Royal RER station in Paris uncovered the largest necropolis in Lutetia, used in the 2nd century AD. The fifty skeletons discovered on the occasion made it possible to advance our knowledge of the Parisii then installed on the banks of the Seine.
This documentary, produced in collaboration with archaeologists from the National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research (Inrap), uses objects exhumed from tombs (coins, glass bottles, ceramics, etc.) to tell the story of the habits and customs of this people of Celtic origin at a key moment in their history: the Romanization of Gaul. Already prosperous through its agriculture and its control of the river, Lutèce then integrated the vast economic network of the Empire and became a commercial crossroads.
Diffusion of the Roman way of life
Using a now classic system, mixing expert words and reconstructions, this film features fictional characters, sometimes created in computer-generated images and sometimes embodied by actors, such as Solimarus and his wife Benusa, representatives of the elite, their slave Litogena or Acapus, the blacksmith. More unusual, the historians interviewed find themselves at certain moments also transformed into virtual avatars, projected into ancient settings. These rigid puppets, unfortunately, give a feeling of strangeness which somewhat parasitizes their message.
If we ignore this clumsy artifice, Lutetia, following in the footsteps of the Parisii, describes with pedagogy the slow diffusion of the Roman way of life: Solimarus, magistrate of the city, wears the toga, speaks Latin and settles his affairs during sumptuous banquets where wild fruits have given way to pork, duck and even oysters! With his wife, he frequented places of well-being and entertainment built by the imperial power, from thermal baths to arenas. “A conquest by seduction rather than by the sword,” summarizes Isabelle Bardiès-Fronty, curator at the Cluny museum.
“Lutetia, in the footsteps of the Parisii”
Thursday July 2, 2026, at 9:05 p.m., on France 5
