In Nîmes the four places that matter are about ten minutes apart on foot: the best preserved Roman temple in the world, the best preserved Roman amphitheatre in the world, an archaeological museum opened in 2018 and an Augustan tower.
Such a concentration of Roman remains is exceptional in France, and it is also why Nîmes often gets written off as a half-day stop between Provence and Languedoc. I spent a full day there and had no time to spare.
There is one mistake nearly everyone makes on arrival, though, and it costs money rather than time: buying the tickets for each monument separately. The Arena, the Maison Carrée and the Tour Magne share a combined ticket, and the choice of pass can change the total by seven euros a head.
Let’s start with the monument that gives the square its name.
1 – The Maison Carrée, one of the best preserved Roman temples
If I had to pick one thing in Nîmes, I would pick this, not the amphitheatre.
The Maison Carrée is a temple dating from 4 AD, and it has come down to us almost intact: the podium, the steps, the colonnade, the entablature and the pediment are all preserved. In 2023 it was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List; the Arena, though better known, is not part of the same listing.
Its dimensions are worth recalling, because they are fairly modest and anyone arriving expecting the Parthenon will be taken aback: 26 metres long, 15 wide and 17 high. It is a small building that looks large, and the reason is the high podium it rests on.
To understand its architecture you have to look above all at the colonnade. The temple is hexastyle, that is, it has six columns across the front, and it is pseudo-peripteral: only the porch columns stand free, while those along the flanks are half-columns engaged in the wall of the cella. There are thirty fluted columns in all, with Corinthian capitals decorated with acanthus leaves.
The three-quarter view works best, because it lets you see the porch and the engaged half-columns of the flanks together.
A curious detail: the stairway has fifteen steps, and the odd number is not accidental. It allowed the priest to set his right foot on the first step and reach the top on the same foot. In Latin the left side is sinister, and it is from that word that the idea of ill omen attached to the left derives: the stairway is designed so that nobody has to begin or end the climb on that side.
2 – Who it was dedicated to, and why it is still standing
The temple rose at the centre of the forum of Nemausus, a public space of 145 metres by 65 ringed with porticoes, and faced the curia.
It was dedicated to Augustus and to Caius and Lucius Caesar, the «princes of youth». Augustus had adopted them as his sons and designated them as heirs; they were also his grandsons, being the children of his daughter Julia. Both died before they could succeed him: Lucius at Marseille in 2 AD, Caius two years later, at twenty-three. The people of Nîmes dedicated the forum temple to them and fixed an inscription in gilded bronze letters to the entablature, now lost.
The text of that inscription has been reconstructed from the holes left by the fixing pegs. In 1758 a local scholar, Jean-François Séguier, studied the arrangement of the holes remaining in the stone, deduced the shape and position of every letter and reconstructed the dedication: «To Caius Caesar, son of Augustus, consul; and to Lucius Caesar, son of Augustus, consul designate, princes of youth». The bronze has been gone for centuries, the words have not.
The building is still standing for the same reason as the Arena: it was never abandoned. Over time it served as a private house, then as a public building, then as an Augustinian convent. Those successive reuses altered it, but they also helped to preserve it.
Finally, look at the architrave, which carries a frieze of acanthus scrollwork inhabited by birds. In the official language of the day that naturalistic decoration stood for the abundance and prosperity guaranteed by the pax romana: it is propaganda in carved stone, and it is beautiful.
3 – The Carré d’Art, the dialogue that makes the square special
Facing the temple, twenty metres away, stands a building of glass and steel that many people photograph without knowing what it is.
It is the Carré d’Art, a contemporary art museum and media library designed by Norman Foster and opened in 1993. It rises on the footprint of the ancient Roman forum, and the choice was not accidental: Foster reinterpreted the portico, the relationship with the steps and the proportions of the temple through glass and steel.
The comparison between the two buildings therefore turns on three precise elements: the monumental portico as a filter between street and interior, the proportions of the facade, and the way the building addresses the public square. From the porch of the Maison Carrée you see the Carré d’Art, and from the Carré d’Art you see the Maison Carrée. It was not an obvious choice: most cities would have built a car park or a mimicking building there.
The Carré d’Art can be visited and holds a permanent contemporary art collection alongside temporary exhibitions. The full ticket costs 8 euros and covers both the exhibition and the permanent collection; anyone who wants to see only the permanent collection pays 5 euros. Admission is free on the first Sunday of the month, and the museum is closed on Mondays.
4 – The Arena, five minutes away on foot
From the Maison Carrée you reach the amphitheatre in about five minutes on foot, along an almost straight route.
The Arena deserves a dedicated piece, and I have written one: in the article on the Arena of Nîmes I explain why it is the best preserved Roman amphitheatre, with all sixty arches still standing and the inner galleries open to walk through. The reason it survived is medieval: instead of being used as a stone quarry, it was occupied inside by a neighbourhood of some two hundred and fifty houses.
What matters here is only the fact that shapes the day. The visit takes an hour and a half with the audio guide, and on days with a feria, a bullfight or a concert the monument closes early or does not open at all. That factor determines the recommended order of the stops, so it is worth checking the events calendar before planning anything else.
5 – The Tour Magne and the Jardins de la Fontaine
The third Roman monument is reached by a climb of about twenty minutes, and it is the one nearly everyone skips.
The Tour Magne is an octagonal tower 32 metres high, the last standing stretch of the wall Augustus had built around Nemausus. You reach its foot by crossing the Jardins de la Fontaine, and the summit is reached by climbing 140 steps. From up there you can clearly see how Nîmes lies along the edge of a plateau of Mediterranean scrub, which the city centre does not reveal.
The gardens are worth the climb on their own. They were laid out from 1745 at the wish of Louis XV, to a design by the king’s engineer Jacques Philippe Mareschal, and they are among the oldest public parks in France. They grew up around the spring that had given the city its name and that in Roman times was a sanctuary. The lower part is an eighteenth-century formal garden of balustrades, basins and statues; the upper part is a Mediterranean landscape garden climbing the hill.
It is best to tackle this stop early in the morning or late in the afternoon. At midday in summer the route is almost entirely exposed to the sun and offers very little shade.
6 – The Musée de la Romanité, opposite the Arena
Opened in 2018, the museum helps make Nîmes a destination for a full day rather than just half a day.
It stands exactly opposite the Arena, and its facade of glass scales is designed to reflect the amphitheatre’s outline. Inside, the archaeological route traces the city from the Iron Age to the Middle Ages. The part that surprised me is not the Roman section but the lapidarium: the stelae, altars and funerary inscriptions are arranged like a forest of stones, among which the visitor can walk reading the names of the people who lived here.
The floor mosaics are the highlight, and they are displayed so that they can also be seen from above. That makes it possible to take in the composition as a whole, instead of looking at it edge-on. Beside them stands a full-scale reconstruction of a Roman room, with walls painted in red and yellow panels and a mosaic floor: it makes it immediately clear how people lived in the domestic interiors of Nemausus.
One fragment deserves attention, and it is the one I photographed precisely for the label beside it. The museum displays a fragment of a frieze with the Temptation, from the 12th century, in which Adam and Eve stand either side of the tree with the serpent coiled round the trunk. The label carries a word that is easy to miss: moulage, that is, a cast. It is therefore not the original. The original is on the facade of the cathedral, five minutes from here, which will be the next stop.
7 – The cathedral and the Romanesque frieze almost nobody looks at
The cathedral of Notre-Dame-et-Saint-Castor faces a small square in the old town. The exterior is fairly plain, but it preserves a Romanesque frieze of great interest: it is worth stopping and looking up, on the left-hand side of the facade.
Above the doorway, beneath the large triangular pediment, runs a carved frieze of the 11th and 12th centuries with episodes from Genesis: the Temptation, the expulsion of Adam and Eve from paradise, Cain and Abel, the Flood and the Tower of Babel. It is one of the most important pieces of Romanesque sculpture in the Midi. The frieze follows a compositional scheme close to that of Early Christian sarcophagi, with the scenes set in sequence along a continuous band.
The frieze does not, however, belong entirely to the 12th century. Part of the reliefs is a 17th-century remaking, and art historians are currently distinguishing the medieval portions from the later interventions in order to reconstruct the successive building phases.
The church was consecrated in 1096 by Pope Urban II, passing through as he preached the crusade, but what you see on going in is largely a 19th-century rebuilding: a single tall, bare nave with rib vaults and an apsidal choir. The interior is cold and grey, and in this case that helps, because nothing distracts from the structure.
In 2023 the frieze was restored with a laser cleaning that removed the dark deposits left by pollution, and the facade scaffolding was taken down. Work on the rest of the building, begun in 2022, was due to finish by the end of 2025: before travelling it is still worth checking the state of the site on the cathedral’s website.
Practical information
Data checked on 7 August 2026 on the official sites arenes-nimes.com, museedelaromanite.fr and carreartmusee.com. Prices and opening hours change: it is worth checking them again before you travel.
The best-value pass is the 3 Monuments Pass, which costs 14.50 euros and covers the Arena, the Maison Carrée and the Tour Magne. The same three admissions bought separately would cost 11, 6.50 and 4 euros, that is 21.50 euros in all, so the pass saves seven euros. Anyone who also wants the museum can consider the Pass Romanité, which costs 20.50 euros, covers the three monuments and the Musée de la Romanité, is valid for three days and gives priority access to the museum and the Arena. For a full-day itinerary it is the most complete of the options described here.
Musée de la Romanité, tickets. The full ticket costs 9 euros and covers the permanent route and the temporary exhibition. The reduced ticket costs 6 euros. The rate for young people aged 7 to 17 is 3 euros, admission is free under 7 and the family deal costs 21 euros.
Musée de la Romanité, opening hours. From April to October the museum opens daily from 10.00 to 19.00. From November to March it opens from 10.00 to 18.00 and is closed on Tuesdays. Last admission is one hour before closing. The museum is closed on 25 December and 1 January.
Musée de la Romanité, free admission. Entry is free for everyone on the first Sunday of the month. Please note: this does not apply in July and August, and it is an exception many guidebooks get wrong.
Carré d’Art, tickets. The full ticket costs 8 euros and covers the temporary exhibition and the permanent collection; the corresponding reduced ticket costs 6 euros. Anyone visiting only the permanent collection pays 5 euros at the full rate and 3 euros at the reduced rate.
Carré d’Art, opening hours. The museum is closed on Mondays. From Tuesday to Friday it opens from 10.00 to 18.00, on Saturday and Sunday from 10.00 to 18.30. Admission is free on the first Sunday of the month. The museum stays closed on 1 January, 1 May, 1 and 11 November and 25 December.
If you stay more than a day. There is an annual pass to the museums of Nîmes that costs 40 euros and gives unlimited access to six museums for a year. It can be bought at any museum, but it has to be activated at the Musée de la Romanité ticket desk. It is useful above all for residents or regular visitors, and it is barely advertised.
Getting there. Nîmes Centre station, five minutes on foot from the Arena, is served by direct TGVs from Paris. Please note: it should not be confused with the Nîmes Pont-du-Gard TGV station, which lies outside the city, about twenty minutes away by car. Anyone arriving by car reaches the centre from the A9 or the A54, depending on where they come from, and can use the paid underground car parks around the Arena.
When to go. Nîmes is hot in summer and its monuments are almost all outdoors and unshaded, so April, May, September and October are generally preferable for milder temperatures. During the two ferias, the Feria de Pentecôte in spring and the Feria des Vendanges in September, the city is crowded and the Arena may be closed to visitors or open on reduced hours: it is best to avoid those dates, unless the ferias are the very reason for the trip.
If you would rather be guided, you can book entry to the Arena with the Roman city audio guide, which links the amphitheatre, the Maison Carrée and the Tour Magne on a single route. If you organise the visit yourself, the 3 Monuments Pass bought at the ticket office costs less.
How to plan the day
Here is the order I would suggest, determined above all by exposure to the sun rather than by art-historical chronology.
Early morning: the Tour Magne and the Jardins de la Fontaine. It is the only uphill stop and the only one away from the centre, so it is best tackled while the temperature is still cool. Allow about an hour and a half, including the visit to the gardens.
Late morning: the Maison Carrée and the Carré d’Art. The visit inside the temple takes about half an hour. The square, on the other hand, deserves to be looked at from both sides. If the heat is starting to build, Foster’s museum is air-conditioned.
Early afternoon: the Musée de la Romanité. It is a good stop for the hottest hours, because the visit takes place indoors. Allow two hours.
Mid-afternoon: the Arena. The visit takes an hour and a half with the audio guide. On the way out, it is worth walking all the way round the outside.
Towards evening: the cathedral and the old town. The Genesis frieze is best appreciated in the raking light of evening, which digs into the reliefs instead of flattening them.
If you have a second day, the stop to add is the Pont du Gard, half an hour away by car. The bridge was part of the aqueduct that supplied Nemausus, so it completes the visit to the city monuments by showing how the Roman town received its water.
Nîmes fits well into an itinerary that also takes in Carcassonne, two hours away. If you are planning a rail trip to see France beyond Paris, it is an easy stop to add. If you would rather follow a route devoted to Roman history, another rewarding stop is the Roman Museum of Lyon.
