Mont Lassois

Dominating the upper Seine valley for approximately 100 m and crowned by a 12th century church, Saint-Marcel of Vix, classified as a historic monument, it is currently the subject of excavations and notable archaeological discoveries concerning the Hallstatt civilization.

Since 1980, wine culture, which was left at the beginning of the 20th century, was re-established on Mont Lassois' slopes: pinot noir and chardonnay grapes for the production of crémant du Châtillonnais.

At the end of the Gallo-Roman period the function of the lower part of the oppidum and the surrounding plain by a vicus would be at the origin of the mountain reconquest and the appearance of the city of Latiscum which raises the Hallstatian walls.

[3] Lassois was then a pagus[7] (a Latin word that means 'country' in English) and an important archdeaconry of the diocese of Langres, which included Bar-sur-Seine and Châtillon, when the Count Palatine Girart de Roussillon, founder of the abbey of Pothières a few kilometers away and of Vézelay, built a castle there.

[3] A few years later a Norman incursion led to the ruin of the site and the ducal castle of Châtillon became the nerve center of the Lassois, which in 1068 extended north of Bar to Burgundy.

Saint-Marcel, Classé MH in 1914[10] (classified as a historical monument), is an evidence of an excellent state of preservation of the first stone constructions on the borders of northern Burgundy and Champagne.

The hiatus of occupation between the end of the Hallstatt and the Gallo-Roman period leaves the traces of the Celtic civilization more accessible to excavation than in other places where these two historical levels followed each other directly.

From 1930 onwards, excavations of the middle and lower parts of the mountain by Jean Lagorgette,[12] assisted by Maurice Moisson, allowed the collection of Gallo-Roman material.

In January 1953, in a loop of the Seine at the foot of the mount, the discovery of the vase and the princely tomb of Vix[13] by Maurice Moisson and René Joffroy renewed interest in the archaeological potential of the site.