Arc de Carpentras

The Arc de Carpentras dates to the early 1st century AD, during the reign of the Roman Emperor Augustus or shortly thereafter. This makes it nearly 2,000 years old and one of the older surviving Roman monuments in southern France.

The Arc de Carpentras stands in the town of Carpentras in the Vaucluse department of Provence, southern France. Carpentras was known in antiquity as Carpentoracte Meminorum, a settlement in Roman Gallia Narbonensis.

The Arc de Carpentras is distinguished by its highly detailed and well-preserved relief carvings, which depict captive barbarians and Roman triumphal imagery. Unlike many Roman triumphal arches that lost their sculptural decoration over centuries, the Carpentras arch retains enough of its carving to give archaeologists and art historians valuable insight into early Imperial Roman sculptural conventions.

The Arc de Carpentras is a single-bay triumphal arch, meaning it has one main passageway rather than the triple-span design seen in larger monuments like the Arch of Constantine in Rome. Its relatively modest scale reflects its function as a civic or commemorative monument in a provincial Gallo-Roman town rather than a major imperial capital.