We always take our guests to visit the Pont du Gard because it has been standing for 2000 years and it is a spectacular to behold in a beautiful location.
Unless you are going to float down the Gardon River on rented kayaks, like we are going to do this summer, a visit to the Pont du Gard can be completed in 1/2 day.
So we usually combine our visits to the Pont du Gard with a visit to Uzes or to the Roman city of Nîmes.
Nîmes has a very long and rich history dating back to the Roman Empire when Nîmes was home to between 50,000 - 60,000 people.
There are several famous and well-preserved monuments such as the Nîmes Arena and the Maison Carrée and because of this Nîmes is often referred to as French Rome.
The arena in Nîmes is twin to the arena in Arles, most likely from the same period (late 1c to early 2c), an excellent example of the perfection attained by Roman egineers in designing and building large and complex buildings.
From the exterior, you see two floors, each with 60 arches, 21 meters in heighth with an attic.
The arena is oval shaped, it measures 133 meters long and 101 meters wide, with an arena of 68 by 38 meters.
In Roman times, the arena could hold 24,000 spectators spread over 34 rows of spectators divided into 4 separate areas.
Each was accessed via a gallery and hundreds of stairwells and passageways called vomitories. They were called vomitories because they permitted the crowd to exit in a speedy hurry.
The arena was designed so that everyone had an unrestricted view of the entire arena.
The arena was remodeled in 1863 to serve as a bullring. The arena of Nîmes is the site of bullfights during the Ferias de Nîmes, a popular festival centered on Spanish-style bullfighting.
The Lycée (high school) Alphonse-Daudet seen below was constructed in the 16th century as a hospice.
The Tour Magne seen below in the distance sits on top of Mont Cavalier, the highest point in Nîmes. It is a vestige of the defenses built around the town. It is a 3-story polygonal tower 112 feet tall.
The Maison Carrée (Square House) seen below, is the best preserved of the Roman temples still standing. It was built under Augustus' (late 1C BC) reign and inspired by the Temple of Apollo in Rome.
Maison Carrée sits on a 2.85 meter high podium, it forms a rectangle almost twice as long as it is wide, measuring 26.42 meters by 13.54 meters.
A large door (6.87 meters high by 3.27 meters wide) leads to a surprisingly small and windowless interior, where the shrine originally was. The building now houses a tourist oriented film on the Roman history of Nîmes
The Maison Carrée inspired the neoclassical Église de la Madeleine in Paris, St. Marcellinus Church in Rogalin, Poland, and in the United States, the Virginia State Capitol, which was designed by Thomas Jefferson, who had a stucco model made of the Maison Carrée while he was minister to France in 1785.
If you have time, besides the places I have highlighted in this post, you should plan to visit the Jardins de la Fontaine, 18th-century gardens in Nîmes, built in 1745 near the former western defensive ramparts of the city.
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