Gallia Narbonensis
| Provincia Gallia Narbonensis | |||||
| Province of the Roman Empire | |||||
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| Capital | Narbo Martius | ||||
| Historical era | Antiquity | ||||
| • | Established | 121 BC | |||
| • | Visigothic conquest | 5th century | |||
| Today part of |
 France Italy Monaco
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Gallia Narbonensis (Latin for "Gaul of Narbonne", from its chief settlement) was a Roman province located in what is now Languedoc and Provence, in southern France. It was also known as Provincia Nostra ("our Province"), from its having been the first Roman province north of the Alps, and as Gallia Transalpina ("Transalpine Gaul"), distinguishing it from Cisalpine Gaul in northern Italy. It became a Roman province in the late 2nd century BC. Its boundaries were roughly defined by the Mediterranean Sea to the south and the Cévennes and Alps to the north and west. The western region of Gallia Narbonensis was known as Septimania.
The province of Gallia Transalpina ("Transalpine Gaul") was later renamed Gallia Narbonensis, after its newly established capital of Colonia Narbo Martius (Narbonne), a Roman colony founded on the coast in 118 BC. The Romans had called it Provincia Nostra ("our province") or simply Provincia ("the province"). The term has survived in the modern French and Occitan names of the eastern part of the area (French Provence, Occitan Provença), now a région of France.
By the mid-2nd century BC, Rome was trading heavily with the Greek colony of Massalia (modern Marseille) on the southern coast of Gaul. Massalia, founded by colonists from Phocaea, was by this point centuries old and quite prosperous. Rome entered into an alliance with Massalia, by which it agreed to protect the town from local Gauls, nearby Aquitani, sea-borne Carthaginians and other rivals, in exchange for a small strip of land that it wanted in order to build a road to Hispania, to assist in troop transport. The Massalians, for their part, cared more for their economic prosperity than they did for territorial integrity. In this strip of land, the Romans founded the town of Narbonne, which turned out to be a major trading competitor with Massalia. It was from this that the province of Transalpine Gaul was founded.
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