the exit of the city, along the tracks: Several burial grounds were discovered in the east and south of the ancient city. Late antiquity During the first centuries of the Christian era, Valence became an important road junction on maps and routes, and the late Roman Empire, this city retained its privileged position. However, as early as the 4th century, Valentia faced many raids but the city within the ramparts retained its monumental adornments competing according to Ammianus Marcellinus (Histoires, XV, 11, 14), with Arles and Vienne. At the dawn of the 5th century, the city lived in shelter of the ramparts erected under the late Roman Empire (still a visible construction in the 19th century). The Visigoths seized Valence in 413 AD; the Burgundians were masters of the Rhône basin at the end of the 5th century; the Valence people fell to the Frankish Kingdom in 533 AD. These successive invasions removed almost all traces of Romanisation. During this troubled period, the city converted its ancient walls into stronger fortifications: Roman gates were bricked up, thus doing away with the two main axes of the city and lasting restructuring of the urban network. The rural inhabitants settled on small hills of the plain, giving rise to a large number of villages: Montoison, Montmeyran, Montélier, Montvendre, Montéléger, etc. Middle Ages Around 800, a new Cathedral of Saint-Estève (of St. Stephen) was built instead of the baptistery, with a choir that was oriented to the west. It was constructed symmetrically to the Evangelist Church. It housed numerous relics: Those of saints Apollinaire, Cyprien, Corneille, Félix, Fortunat, Achillée and a fragment of the True Cross. The episcopal district also included housing for the canons, grouped around a court cemetery, and a round church, Notre-Dame-la-Ronde. At the beginning of the 9th century, perhaps before, the Roman wall was raised with walls constructed from pebbles. In 890, the widow of King Boso of Provence had their son, Louis III, crowned King of Provence in Valence. In 1029, the Archbishop of Vienne invested Guigues III the Old of the County of Viennois. It belonged to the family of the Counts of Albon, which held the region for decades, frequently occupying the county and the Diocese of Valence. The region still suffered the raids of the Saracens at the end of the 9th and the 10th century. The Rhône was sometimes presented as the border between