Explorer Nîmes

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.

The Tour Magne is a tower on Mont Cavalier, the highest point of the Roman walls of Nîmes, which had about 80 towers. Under Augustus it was built around an older Gallic tower of dry stone, doubling its height to 36 metres; about 32 metres remain. An inner staircase of some 140 steps leads to a platform with views over the city.