Nîmes is often dubbed the most Roman city which isn’t Rome. It didn’t disappoint. We got here on three trains; on Friday we took the train from Kelvedon to London and stayed overnight. Then Saturday we headed to the Eurostar terminal and took the Eurostar to the Gare du Nord. From there a couple of stops on the RER got us to the Gare de Lyon and then a few hours more on a TGV and we arrived at the Gare de Nîmes (yes – that was actually four trains, but I’m not counting the French RER underground!). The hotel was just a two minute walk from the station, so one day’s travel saw us leaving the cold of the UK to exchange it for the cold of the south of France (it was just a few degrees when we arrived).
A short evening walk took us to a lovely restaurant just beside the amphitheatre and while there it seemed rude not to try the local wines – after all we were sat beside a small screen with a quote from Alfred de Musset reading “I like all the French wines because they make you love them“. He is apparently a French poet, dramatist and novelist, known for writing the autobiographical novel La Confession d’un enfant du siècle (The Confession of a Child of the Century). The wines were accompanied (or should it be the other way round?) by truffle tagliatelles, a truffle omelette and for dessert crème brûlée (the translation – burnt cream – sounds less appealing!) and nougat ice cream; we have definitely arrived in France …
The next morning we started exploring Nîmes. The name of the city stems from its Gallic rather than Roman past. The name derives from the Greek/Gallic God Nemausus who was the local patron of the hill-fort which was later later refounded as a colonia under Roman rule and became Nîmes. Nemausus was then adopted by the Romans and ‘Romanised’.
However, the main sights of the city stem from this Roman period and we started at the amphitheatre. This is known as the Arena of Nîmes and was built around 100AD. It is one of the best preserved Roman Amphitheatres in the world and its survival has in many ways been fortuitous. Its position meant that for a long time it became part of the town’s defences and then later on in the 12th century, as its military role diminished, people moved in and it became a small village with houses built inside the arena. In the 18th century there were still 150 houses inside the arena, but, influenced by the idea of the Renaissance, King Francis I decided to restore it to its previous appearance. The houses were cleared from 1786 onwards and the restoration completed in the mid 19th century. from then on the amphitheatre has been used for events and celebrations, though now they kill bulls rather than Christians.
From the amphitheatre we walked a short way north to the Maison Carrée. Literally this means the ‘square house’ but this belies its heritage. It is actually one of the best-preserved Roman temples in the territory of the former Roman Empire. It is known as an Augustan provincial temple of the Imperial cult, otherwise termed a caesareum. The Imperial Cult meant that the Roman Emperors had a divine right to rule and the Maison Carrée is dedicated to it. The temple honours Augustus’s adopted grandsons, Gaius and Lucius Caesar, who died prematurely and became known as the “Princes of Youth,” symbolizing Rome’s power. The aim of building the temple was to promote loyalty to the imperial family and simultaneously demonstrate the region’s loyalty to their masters in Rome. In September 2023, the Maison Carrée was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List.
Across the top of the pediment at the front of the temple is a series of holes – these mark the place where bronze letters had been fixed with an inscription dedicating the temple to Gaius and Lucius. This was, however, was removed in medieval times and so no-one knew what it had previously read. In 1758, however, a local scholar – Jean-François Séguier, was able to reconstruct the inscription from the order and number of the holes. According to Séguier’s reconstruction, the text of the dedication reads: “To Gaius Caesar, son of Augustus, Consul; to Lucius Caesar, son of Augustus, Consul designate; to the princes of youth”.
In Roman times this temple would have dominated the forum area and people would not have been allowed inside the cella, that would have been preserved for the priests who looked after the shrine. Ceremonies would have taken place at an altar outside the temple.
Next stop was a wander through the Jardins de la Fontaine. These are based around the spring of “La Fontaine”. This was probably the main reason for the city being founded here and the spring is where the water emerges from a huge underground reservoir under the northern side of the city. In Roman times this spring was sacred and would have had an Augusteum around it, a sanctuary devoted to the cult of the emperor and his family, centred on a nymphaeum (a monument consecrated to the nymphs). In the 18th century the gardens were completely rebuilt around the spring and are now a majestic surround marking the birth and origins of the city itself.
Also in the gardens is the so-called Temple of Diana. However, no-one is quite sure why it is called a temple as there is no archaeological or literary evidence for it being dedicated to Diana. Many scholars speculate that it might actually have been a library, though it perhaps survived not due to it being a library but through being a monastery in the mediaeval era.
The next stop was up, then up some more and then up a little bit more, weaving through the gardens to the Tour Magne. This was one of the oldest surviving structures in Nîmes and pre-dated the Roman era. However, the Romans never saw anything which they didn’t think they could improve and so they re-modelled and extended the tower in the Augustan era. The tower then became a defensive part of the city walls and has survived, partly thanks to a 19th century restoration. However, it nearly didn’t make it thanks to Nostradamus! In the 12th Century he prophesied “gleaming metals of the sun and moon” hidden beneath “ancient vestal buildings“. A local gardener, Francois Traucat, was convinced that this referred to the Tour de Magne and he got permission from the King to search the building. This was granted on the condition that two-thirds of any treasure found belonged to the King – seems fair, do no work, but get two-thirds. Francois’s enthusiasm for this search nearly destroyed the tower and a new internal column had to be added to stabilise, but the obsession ruined him and he found nothing.
Our tour of Nîmes continued via the Porte d’Auguste – one of the original gates for the Via Domitia (the Domitian Way was the road from Rome through to Spain) and then back through the old town to the Cathedral. This is is believed to stand on the site of the former temple of Augustus and is partly Romanesque and partly Gothic in style. It is also the seat of the Bishops of Nîmes, though oddly they didn’t seem to be working on a Sunday as the cathedral was closed!
we then made a well-deserved stop in a lovely traditional French restaurant for a relaxed french-style lunch. However, given that they still hold bullfights in the Arena at Nîmes, it was probably best not to dwell on the origin of the saucisse de taureau which we had for lunch!
The final stop of the day was at the Roman Museum next to the Amphitheatre. Given all we had seen during the morning, this was an excellent way to round off a very Roman day. The quality of the exhibits was amazing with exquisite carvings, bone and ivory toys and tools and a whole range of roman artefacts.
Perhaps the best though was the mosaics. The centrepiece of the exhibition was a mosaic which was discovered in 2007 during archaeological excavations on the Avenue Jean Jaurès, prior to building an underground car park.
