While walking on hills of mimosas which encircle Vallauris, everyone can admire the panorama which extends from Nice, Antibes and its Cape, Cannes and The islands of Lerins, Esterel, up to Grasse more in North and Prealpes, still snow-covered on bottom of sky-blue...
For the warned walker, stones and ruins will reveal the secrets and the evolution of the first inhabitants of this area.
The vestiges of a Roman way, which connected Antipolis (Antibes) to Cordula (Vallauris), remain in Impiniers.
On the hill of Encourdoules (heights of Vallauris), one finds impressive a oppidum dating from the Ligure time. The cut stone walls, built without cement, are several meters thickness. Their height, certainly cannot be known but by places it still exceeds two meters.
This considerable building lets suppose that it protected a significant number of inhabitants, at one time when insecurity was important. Many vestiges were found in the ground, such as, coins, remains of tiles and potteries, thus revealing invaluable information on manners of the time.
The first visible traces left by the Man in this commun go back to only a few centuries before Jesus-Christ, and were those of the Ligurians.
One designates under the name of Ligurians the inhabitants of Provence at the iron age ; more than one race, they undoubtedly constituted the first occitan community known, made extremely various tribes occupying a vast active territory from Languedoc to current Italy, in the neighbourhoods of Xth century before J.-C.
Undoubtedly, these tribes had to defend their harvests and their herds against hackers infesting the Mediterranean sea as well as terrestrial barbarians.
Romans will colonize and modernize the area, in particular, creating on the antique traced going along sea-side a new way, the way Via Aurélia. Besides, this one was borrowed by Jules Cesar in year 50 before Jesus Christ, when he went in Cisterrieur Gaule.
After 44 and Cesar's death, his murder Decimus Brutus controls the area which already bears the name of the "Alpes-maritimes", and whose Antoine, income from Macedoine, wants to seize.
In the Ist, II and III centuries, Pagus rises in Encourgoules, on the site of the old oppidum ligure. The remainders of columns, grounds and tombs attest Roman occupation of the place.
After the decline of Roman empire, until average age, the area will know one very dark period during which one the plunderings and massacres perpetuated by Sarrazins will have not rest.
Vallauris and Cannes will be devastated in 987, which will lead Guillaume Ist to engage a wild fight, and to push back the enemy, in this end of Xth century.
In the year Thousand, Vallauris depends on the seignory of Antibes ; then begin a peaceful period, involving a movement of restoration. In 1038, following a donation to the Lerins' monastery , a delimitation between Antibes and Vallauris are fixed and will not change any more.
Towards 1200, the Prior of Lerins orders construction of a priory and a castle, on the site of the current castle, and a vault contiguous to the priory; it is the vault where is today the Picasso museum.
From XIVth century, famine, epidemics and plunderers will decimate Vallauris, so that at the XVth century, the city becomes an uninhabited place.
Thanks to the efforts of the lerins' abbots, inhabitants of Ligurie will settle and repopulate Vallauris starting from the beginning of XVIth century. Mills, furnaces, ramparts, as well as house-ramparts, and even a hospital are built.
Having taken extension and able to ensure its own defense at the begining of Rebirth, Vallauris is both ready to take part to the economic raising and to contribute to repopulate the coastal tape which will be, four hundred years later, the Riviera.
The reasons of this rise are primarily due to the economic possibilities offered to the inhabitants. Red clays are used by potters whose furnaces are supplied by trees of the forests of the community. The richness of the grounds will allow new cultures and orange tree, in particular, appears at that time. The sharing of the grounds makes it possible to provide for the food needs for each one. The breeding provides milk and meat. As for the edge of sea, Gourjan (Gulf-Juan), finds its vocation, and develops a small fishing industry.
Fishes are abundant :sardines, sea-breams, wolves, murenes, and sometimes tunas.
The "bouillabaisse" constitutes the basic dish of fishermen of all the Provence coast.
Nutritive and refined, "Bouillabaisse" is ourdays very prized.
But it is right to say that Ligurians were themselves, very often, extremely frightening.
Oxybiens and Deceates were true plunderers, on ground as on sea.
The oppidum (fortified camp) of the hill of Encourdoules, which sheltered Deceates, occupied a position of choice. Indeed, at the same time defensive and strategic, this dominant position made it possible to observe and supervise the obliged passages (terrestrial or maritime) of travellers, tradesmen or soldiers, the sight extending from Nice up to Esterel. They also could take care on their port located at Gulf-Juan.
With Oxybiens, their neighbors occupying Aegitna (Cannes or Biot ?), they formed towards 160 before J.-C. a kind of confederation.
Linked by multiple links, in particular in the plundering of the Coast and the sea, they caused many worries to their Greek neighbors occupying the colonies of Nicea and Antipolis. So that in 154 before J.-C., the Greeks of Antipolis asked the Roman Senate to put an end to Ligures' exactions. The consul Quintus Opimius, and his army, will inaugurate what will become later, the Conquest of Gaules.
Hunters and fishermen, the Ligurians also cultivated olive-tree, wine and cereales.
