Gannat

Gannat is a common French, located in the department Allier and the area of Auvergne.

Chief town of canton, sub-prefecture until 1926, with a population of approximately 5.800 inhabitants. One finds there a castle, two churches including one (Saint-Etienne) partly Romance, with a évangéliaire of IXe century in the treasure. Each summer in July proceeds the Festival of Gannat " there; cultures of Monde". Sainte Procule is the owner of the city.

Gannat is the city where was born the actress Sandrine Bonnaire.

Geography

The commune is located on the Trunk road 9 (axis Moulins - Clermont-Ferrand). It is located at 18 kilometers in the west of Vichy and at 43 kilometers in the north of Clermont-Ferrand.
The commune is circumvented of is in west by the highway A719 or the Antenne of Gannat allowing to connect it to the highway A71.

History

The traces the oldest discoveries with Gannat go back to a few twenty-three million years. They take us along on the track of the brachypothères, in other words Rhinocéros of the end of the Oligocène.

Gannat seems to have been a true cemetery for these animals, so that one discovers multitudes of fossilized bones. One finds also fish, reptiles, tortoises or crocodiles, birds galliformes, mammals, marsupial , insectivorous, rodent and carnivorous ones. The site is particularly rich in fossils of rhinoceros. Since 1854, Duvernoy made even the description of a specimen known as " Acerotherium gannatense" (official name remaining Diaceratherium Lemanense, the " Diaceratherium" of Limagne). To date, the most complete skeleton of rhinoceros was discovered during the Nineties when important fossils were put at the day on the career of Sichaux in 1993 by the paleontologist François Escuillié (in particular discoverer of a Mammouth, ancestor of the elephant of 50 million years ago). This last was also at the origin of the creation of association Rhinopolis in 1994 and founder of Eldonia, company amongst other things specialized in the restoration of fossils and whose activities were in the beginning related to Rhinopolis.

Gannat is a very important locality for the Paléontologie. The studies on fossil faunas of Oligocene and the lower Miocène of the area have a significance not only auvergnate or bourbonnaise but especially French, European and international.

Of the primitive occupation at the Gallo-Roman period

The highway building sites on the territory gannatois made it possible to discover several industries on rollers of quartz which would make go up the settlement of the area around eight hundred and thousand years.

The layer of Closed of Montsala revealed osseous Biface S and fragments which indicate a presence of hunters around three hundred and thousand years.

A structure of small blocks limestones containing of many bones of horses as well as an original lithic industry are the only remainders of a halt of hunting of an small group of hunters come from North seventeen thousand years ago.

The discovery of pits, silos, wells, ceramics, bracelets of bronze or blue glass, enclosed with entries, ashes and charcoals show us that the area was already intensively occupied by the populations of the final Bronze with the second age of iron.

After the resistance of Gallic to Gergovie then the defeat of Vercingétorix to Alésia in 52 before Jesus-Christ, Gannatois had to receive the Romans extremely interested by the richnesses of Limagne. The latter developed the space cultivated by the drainage of the ground, in particular in the marshy grounds of the Small-Marsh.

The Gallic ones are " romanisés" little by little and one can see many Gallo-Roman structures in the communes of Saint-Priest-in Andelot, Bègues or Mazerier. Craftsmen flower that and there to satisfy the Roman request. Thus one discovered, with about thirty moulds, vases, a furnace and two dispensaries of potters, whose activity goes back to the beginning of the first century after Jesus-Christ. The construction materials are imported and exchanged against the artisanal or agricultural local production. The urban centres develop as well as the transportation routes, connecting the Clermont capital to Menat, Biozat, Vichy, Gannat, Bègues and Chantelle.

Administration

Demography

Places and monuments

Church gallicane Holy-Cross
Romance Church Saint-Etienne
Castle of Gannat (castle having been used as prison of state at the time of the Mode of Vichy)

Personalities related to the commune

Sandrine Bonnaire: French actress
Jean-Marc Lhermet: former high level and international rugby player has club of ASM Clermont Auvergne and current manager of this same club.
Jean Rock: Founder of the " Festival Of the Cultures Of Monde"
Pierre François Sauret of Borie: general of empire
François Escullié: paleontologist, founder of Rhinopolis

See too

Common To combine it

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