Road station
Brigantione
Notre-Dame de Briançon
Brigantione is Briançon, high on the Durance, where travellers left the valley to climb the Matrona, the Mont Genèvre pass, as the pilgrim from Bordeaux puts it. The Greek geographer Strabo knew it as a village; later it was a town with Latin rights and its own magistrates, and the Roman historian Ammianus calls it a fort. On the map the scribe, wishing to keep the mountains free of lettering, crowded the names here: the pass name sits along Briançon's stretch, and Briançon's own name above it. The four Vicarello cups give eighteen miles, about twenty-seven kilometres, from Rama; the map has nineteen.