History :

From the IInd century, an huge wine-producing farm spread out at the Loou. This has been demonstrated by excavations :

Domaine du Loou - old well

 
- Pitcher and oil lamp -
late IIIth early IVth century

 


Villa of the Loou - excavations - 

The Villa du Loou was completely excavated from 1978 to 1983 :

5000 square meters of farm buildings were discovered. Vines, olive trees and vegetable plants already used to be cultivated in this ancient farm wich fell into : Two 1,300 hectolitre strorerooms, a wine press, farmyards, pools and premises for residential use. As you can notice in the following pictures, the Domaine was already wine-producing.

 

Excavations of the Roman villa enable archeologists to define :

The Domaine’s origins :

- The first building were built in the second half of the Ist century B.C. They were wooden military-type building military the presence of wich could attest that the Domaine was attributed to a legionnary of the Vth Legion at the time of the destruction of the Arles colony in 46 B.C.

The Domaine’s vocation :

- Buildings of the IInd have enabled archeologists to determine what the demographic repartition of the population was at this time. As a matter of fact, wine-producing farms are frequently referred to in books dealing with Gallic agriculture.
 

Several centuries later, around 1810, the Jauffret family sold the Domaine to the Alexis family and for the last 40 years the owner has been Dominique di Placido who has restored it to its former grandeur.