Explorar Nimes

The Maison Carrée is a Roman temple built in the early 1st century AD at the edge of the forum of Nîmes and dedicated to Gaius and Lucius Caesar, grandsons of Augustus. Raised on a podium and ringed by 30 Corinthian columns, it later served as a consular house, a church and a museum, and became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2023.

The Musée de la Romanité is the archaeological museum of Nîmes, opened in 2018 opposite the Roman amphitheatre in a building by Elizabeth de Portzamparc with a pleated glass façade. Its galleries follow the city from the Gallic period through Roman Nemausus to the Middle Ages, with mosaics, statues and inscriptions, and a roof terrace overlooks the arena.

The Arena of Nîmes is a Roman amphitheatre built at the end of the 1st century AD for about 24,000 spectators. Its elliptical outline measures 133 by 101 m, and its 21 m facade has two tiers of 60 arcades. Fortified in the Middle Ages and filled with houses until their clearance began in 1786, it now hosts bullfights, concerts and Roman-themed shows.

The Jardins de la Fontaine are a public garden laid out between 1745 and 1755 by the military engineer Jacques-Philippe Mareschal around the spring where Nîmes began, on the site of a Roman sanctuary. Basins, balustrades and statues fill the formal lower garden, while wooded paths climb Mont Cavalier past the Temple of Diana to the Tour Magne.

The so-called Temple of Diana is a 1st-century Roman building beside the spring in the Jardins de la Fontaine, once part of a sanctuary for the cult of Augustus. Its plan suggests it was not a temple and it may have been a library. A medieval monastery kept its vaulted hall with wall niches standing, and it was uncovered in 1745.