La Turbie is quite as much of an exotic as Eze. It is as vivid a reminder of a glory that is past as any monumental town still extant, and its noble Augustan Trophy, as a memorial of a historical past, is far greater than anything of its kind out of Rome itself. There is something almost sublime about this great sky-piercing tower, a monument to the vanquishing of the peoples of Gaul by the Roman legions.
Fragments of this great “trophy” have been carted away, and are to be found all over the neighbouring country. Barbarians and Saracens, one and all, pillaged the noble tower (“the magnificent witness to the powers of the divine Augustus,” as the French historians call it), using it as a quarry from which was drawn the building material for many of their later works. Without scruple it has been shorn of its attributes until to-day it is only a bare, gaunt skeleton of its former proud self. Its marbles have been dispersed, some are in Nice, some in Monaco, and some in Genoa, but the greatest of all the indignities which the edifice underwent was that thrust upon it by Berwick, in 1706, when attempts were actually made to pull it to the ground.
Augustan Trophy, La Turbie
What its splendours must once have been may best be imagined from the following description:
“A massive quadrangular tower surrounded with columns of the Doric order and ornamented with statues of the lieutenants of Augustus, and personifications of the vanquished peoples. Surmounting all was a colossal statue of the emperor himself.”
La Turbie has a most interesting “porte,” once fortified, but now a mere gateway. It dates from the sixteenth century, and is an exceedingly satisfying example of what a mediæval gateway was in feudal times.
The church of the town is of great size and well kept, but otherwise is in no way remarkable.
As with the founders of Eze, the builders of La Turbie and its great Augustan Trophy had their material close at hand, and there was no need for the laborious carrying of material from a distance which accompanied the building of many mediæval monuments and fortifications.