Nîmes is a city and commune of southern France.
It is the préfecture (capital) of the Gard département.
Nîmes has a rich history, dating back to the Roman Empire,
and is a popular tourist destination.
read full wikipedia reference about Nimes, France
• Arrival,
Information And Accommodation
• The
Bullfight
• Dining
And Drinking
On the border between Provence
and Languedoc, the name of NÎMES is inescapably
linked to two things - denim and Rome. The latter's influence is highly
visible in some of the most extensive Roman remains in Europe,
while the former ( de Nîmes ), equally visible on the backsides
of the populace, was first manufactured in the city's textile
mills, and exported to the southern USA in the nineteenth century to clothe
slaves. It's worth a visit, in part for the ruins and, nowadays,
for the city's new-found energy and direction, enlisting the
services of a galaxy of architects and designers - including
Norman Foster, Jean Nouvel and Philippe Starck - in a bid to
wrest southern supremacy from neighbouring Montpellier.
Most of what you'll want
to see is contained within the boulevards de la Libération,
Amiral-Courbet, Gambetta and Victor-Hugo, and there is much pleasure
to be had from just wandering the narrow lanes that they enclose,
discovering unexpected squares with their fountains and cafés.
The focal point of the city, the first-century Roman arena, known
as Les Arènes (daily: July & Aug 9am-6.30pm; rest
of year 9am-noon & 2-5pm; closed during special events),
lies at the junction of boulevards de la Libération and
Victor-Hugo. One of the best-preserved Roman arenas anywhere,
its arcaded two-storey facade conceals massive interior vaulting,
riddled with corridors and supporting raked tiers of seats with
a capacity of more than 20,000 spectators, whose staple fare
was the blood and guts of gladiatorial combat. When Rome's sway
was broken by the barbarian invasions, the arena became a fortress
and eventually a slum, home to an incredible 2000 people when
it was cleared in the early 1800s. Today it has recovered something
of its former role, with the passionate summer crowds still turning
out for some real-life blood-letting - Nîmes is the premier
European bullfighting scene outside Spain.
Behind the arena, through
the beautiful little place du Marché, rue Fresque leads
towards the city's other famous landmark, the Maison Carrée
(daily: July & Aug 9am-noon & 2.30-7pm; rest of year
9am-12.30pm & 2-6pm; free), a neat, jewel-like temple, celebrated
for its integrity and harmony of proportion. Built in 5 AD, it
is dedicated to the adopted sons of Emperor Augustus - all part
of the business of blowing up the imperial personality cult.
No surprise, then, that Napoléon, with his love of flummery
and ennobling his cronies to boost his own legitimacy, should
have taken it as the model for the church of the Madeleine in
Paris. The temple stands in its own
small square opposite rue Auguste, where the Roman forum used
to be. Around it are scattered pieces of Roman masonry. On the
north side of place de la Maison Carrée, there's a new
example of French architectural boldness, the Carrée d'Art
, by English architect Norman Foster. In spite of its size, this
box of glass, aluminium and concrete sits modestly among the
ancient roofs of Nîmes, its slender portico echoing that
of the Roman temple opposite. Light pours in through walls and
roof, giving it a grace and weightlessness that makes it not
in the least incongruous. Housed within the Carrée d'Art
is the excellent Musée d'Art Contemporain (Tues-Sun 11am-6pm),
containing an impressive collection of French and Western European
art of the last four decades. There is a roof-terrace café
at the top, overlooking the Maison Carrée.
Though already a prosperous
city on the Via Domitia, the main Roman road from Italy to Spain, constructed in 118 BC, Nîmes
did especially well under Augustus. He gave the city its walls,
remnants of which surface here and there, and its gates, as the
inscription on the surviving Porte d'Auguste at the end of rue
Nationale - the Roman main street - records. He also, indirectly,
gave it the chained crocodile of its coat of arms. The device
was copied from an Augustan coin struck to commemorate his defeat
of Antony and Cleopatra after he settled veterans of that campaign
on the surrounding land.
Running back east into
the old quarter from the Maison Carrée, rue de l'Horloge
leads to the delightful place aux Herbes , with two or three
cafés and bars and a fine twelfth-century house on the
corner of rue de la Madeleine. In the former bishop's palace,
the Musée du Vieux Nîmes (daily 11am-6pm) has displays
of Renaissance furnishings and decor and documents to do with
local history. Opposite, the Cathédrale Notre-Dame-et-St-Castor
sports a handsome sculpted frieze on the west front, illustrating
the story of Adam and Eve, and a pediment inspired by the Maison
Carrée. It is practically the only existing medieval building
in town, as most were destroyed in the turmoil that followed
the Michelade, the St Michael's Day massacre of Catholic clergy
and notables by Protestants in 1567. Despite brutal repression
in the wake of the Camisard insurrection of 1702, Nîmes
was, and remains, a doggedly Protestant stronghold. Apart from
that, the cathedral is of little interest, having been seriously
mutilated in the Wars of Religion and significantly altered in
the last century. The author, Alphonse Daudet, was born in its
shadow, as was Jean Nicot - a doctor, no less - who introduced
tobacco into France from Portugal in 1560 and gave his name to the
world's most popular drug.
Banned from public office,
the Protestants put their energy into making money. The results
of their efforts can be seen in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century
hôtels they built in the streets around the cathedral -
rues de l'Aspic, Chapitre, Dorée and Grande-Rue, among
others. Their church is the serious-looking Grand Temple on boulevard
Amiral-Courbet. On the same street, the Musée Archéologique
and Muséum d´Histoire Naturelle (Tues-Sun 11am-6pm),
housed in a seventeenth-century Jesuit chapel at no. 13, are
full of Roman bits and bobs and stuffed animals. There's another
museum, the Musée des Beaux-Arts , south of the Arènes
in rue de la Cité-Foulc (daily 11am-6pm; 28F/?4.27), which
prides itself on a huge Gallo-Roman mosaic showing the Marriage
of Admetus , but is otherwise pretty ordinary.
The interior of the Hôtel
de Ville , between rue Dorée and rue des Greffes, has
been redesigned by the architect Jean-Michel Wilmotte, combining
high-tech with classical stone. Most of the other major examples
of revolutionary building are out on the southern edge of town:
Jean Nouvel's pseudo-Mississippi-steamboat housing project off
the Arles road behind the gare SNCF , named Nemausus after the
deity of the local spring that gave Nîmes its name; and
the magnificent sports stadium, the Stades des Costières
, by Vittorio Gregotti, close to the autoroute along the continuation
of avenue Jean-Jaurés.
Perhaps the most refreshing
thing you can do while in Nîmes is head out to the Jardin
de la Fontaine , France's first public garden, created in 1750,
northwest of the centre at the top end of avenue Jean-Jaurés.
Behind the formal entrance, where fountains, nymphs and formal
trees enclose the so-called Temple of Diana , steps climb the
steep wooded slope, adorned with grottoes and nooks and artful
streams, to the Tour Magne (daily: July & Aug 9am-7pm; rest
of year 9am-5pm), a 32-metre tower from Augustus' city walls,
with a terrific view out over the surrounding country - as far,
it is claimed, as the Pic du Canigou on the edge of the Pyrenees.
At the foot of the slope flows the gloriously green and shady
Canal de la Fontaine , built to supplement the rather unsteady
supply of water from the fontaine , the Nemausus spring, whose
presence in a dry, limestone landscape gave Nîmes its existence.
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