City
Aventicum Helvetiorum
Avenches
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Aventicum Helvetiorum was the chief town of the Helvetii, and it took its name from the Celtic goddess Aventia, whose cult is attested in inscriptions found there. Today it is Avenches in the Swiss canton of Vaud. The emperor Vespasian raised it to a Roman colony and allowed it a ring of walls about five and a half kilometres long. The map marks it with a small building, which scholars have read as a temple of the goddess. In the fourth century the historian Ammianus Marcellinus called it a deserted city, though its half-ruined buildings still showed it had once enjoyed some renown.