Alyscamps

In Arles, along the Avenue des Alyscamps, on the southeastern edge of the Old Town, stretch the Alyscamps (the "Elysian Fields"), an extensive Roman burial place which, according to the legend of St Trophime, was dedicated as a Christian cemetery and, in the Middle Ages, was so famous that the dead were brought here for burial from considerable distances; Dante refers to it in his "Inferno". This led to the curious procedure of bringing the dead - in cleverly designed barrels together with a sum of money - along the Rhône to Arles, where they were fished out of the water by people employed for the purpose and duly interred. Their marble sarcophagi, which were later neglected, sold or destroyed, were not assembled again until the 18th C