Saintes is not a stop you find on itineraries, and it is an hour from La Rochelle and an hour and a half from Bordeaux. It has a Roman arch of AD 18, an amphitheatre among the oldest in the empire and a cathedral whose bell tower is cut off halfway.
The arch, though, does not stand where it was built, and that is the most interesting thing anyone can tell you about the town.
Why would anyone move a Roman arch twenty-eight metres?
The Arch of Germanicus, and how it survived
The arch was put up between AD 18 and 19, at the expense of a local notable, Caius Julius Rufus, and dedicated to the emperor Tiberius, to his adopted son Germanicus and to his son Drusus. The names can still be read in the inscription.
It was not a triumphal arch in the usual sense. It stood at the head of the Roman bridge over the Charente and worked as a town gate: anyone arriving at Mediolanum Santonum, Roman Saintes, passed under it on the way in. It has two bays, one for each direction of traffic, and you only grasp that once you know what it was for.
The Roman bridge was demolished in the nineteenth century for work on the river quays, and the arch would have gone with it. It was saved by two people: Prosper Mérimée, then inspector of historical monuments, and Victor Hugo, who passed through Saintes in September 1843. On Mérimée’s proposal the arch was taken down and rebuilt twenty-eight metres away, on the bank, where it still stands. The restoration was completed in 1851.
It is worth looking at knowing this, because it changes what you see. It is not a monument in its place: it is a monument somebody decided to keep, in a period when the normal alternative was pulling it down. The same thing had happened at Jumièges in the same decade, and at Carcassonne a few years later, with Mérimée involved each time.
The amphitheatre, which is older than the Colosseum
Outside the centre, in a natural hollow the builders used to save themselves earthworks, stands the Gallo-Roman amphitheatre. It could hold about fifteen thousand spectators.
The date is what matters. It belongs to the first half of the 1st century, a generation before the Colosseum, which is of AD 70-80, and it is one of the oldest in the Roman world. Anyone who knows the arena of Nîmes or the Colosseum will find something more rustic and less engineered here: part of the seating rests directly on the slope instead of on a structure of substructures, which is exactly the solution later amphitheatres abandon.
It is ruined, and nobody goes to Saintes looking for an intact monument. You go to see how people built before the formula was worked out.
The cathedral with the truncated tower
In the centre, the cathedral of Saint-Pierre is recognisable from a distance for an odd reason: its bell tower stops abruptly, with a low dome where the spire should be.
It was not left that way by choice. The church was badly damaged during the Wars of Religion, in 1568, and the rebuilding that followed never put back the intended spire. What you see today is an interrupted building, with the stump covered as best it could be.
The doorway deserves a pause because it keeps the best of the sculpture: the archivolts run in several concentric orders full of figures, and the gargoyles project above. Many heads have been chiselled off, and that too is 1568.
Inside, the nave is tall and largely pale, with rib vaults and clustered piers. It is not a cathedral that astonishes, it is a cathedral you can read: the scars of what happened are there, and they are not hidden.
The Abbaye aux Dames, across the river
Crossing to the other bank you reach the Abbaye aux Dames, and the change of style is sharp: here you go back two centuries from the cathedral.
It is a Romanesque abbey, founded in the first half of the 11th century as a women’s monastery, and that detail is not a matter of manners: it was run by abbesses who came from the nobility and administered a considerable estate. They educated the daughters of aristocratic families, which made it a school as well.
Architecturally the things to look at are the bell tower, whose upper stage is polygonal and covered by a scaled stone cone, and the façade, with its orders of carved round-headed archivolts, which is Saintonge Romanesque, the local manner.
Today the abbey is a cité musicale: it houses an academy and a concert season, so you may find it taken up with rehearsals. That is not a problem, and often it is the opposite.
How to line them up
Saintes is walkable, and the sequence I would suggest follows the river rather than the chronology.
Start at the arch, which stands on the quay and costs nothing. Cross the bridge and go up into the centre for the cathedral, also free. From there head back towards the river for the Abbaye aux Dames. The amphitheatre is higher up and further out, about twenty minutes on foot from the centre, and it is the stop to leave for last, or to drop if time is short.
Half a day covers everything. A full day also allows the archaeological museum and sitting on the quays, which is a legitimate way of spending time in a town that lives on its river.
Practical information
Data checked on 8 August 2026 on saintes-tourisme.fr and on the Abbaye aux Dames site. Prices and hours change: check again before you travel.
What you do not pay for. The Arch of Germanicus stands in the open on a public square and can be seen free at any hour. The cathedral of Saint-Pierre is free to enter. That is two thirds of what people come here for. Gallo-Roman amphitheatre. Full admission costs 4 euros and groups of 15 or more pay 3 euros each. Entry is free for under-18s, for students and for the unemployed. From April to September there is a Pass Patrimoine at 8 euros combining the amphitheatre and three museums, which is the good-value option if you stay the day. Amphitheatre hours. From 1 July to 31 August it opens Tuesday to Friday 10.00-18.00, Saturday and Sunday 10.00-12.30 and 13.30-18.00. From 1 to 30 September it opens Tuesday to Saturday 10.00-12.30 and 13.30-17.30. Take note: for the other months the published hours are not as clear, so telephone or check the site if you go out of season. Abbaye aux Dames. The historical visit costs 13 euros full and 10 euros reduced, the themed visit 15 and 12 euros. The audio guide costs 9 euros full and 6 reduced. Under-6s are free. It is the most expensive monument in town, so decide in advance whether it interests you. Getting there. Saintes is on the railway line between La Rochelle and Bordeaux, with direct services to both: it is a little under an hour from the first and about an hour and a half from the second. By car it sits on the axis between the two. How long it takes. Half a day for the arch, the cathedral and the abbey. A full day with the amphitheatre and the museum. An honest warning. Saintes is a small, quiet town, and its monuments are notable rather than spectacular. Go if you like provincial Roman work and Romanesque, or because you are passing: as a two-hour detour off the motorway it pays well, as a destination in itself rather less.
If your journey carries on south, the Pont du Gard and the arena of Nîmes are the two Roman monuments that close the argument begun here. Northwards, in Normandy, Jumièges Abbey tells of another nineteenth-century rescue.
