Guided by a Gladiator

Welcome to the place where stone meets blood, glory and immortality. What you have in front of you is not just a monument: it is the heart of Nemausus, the best preserved amphitheatre in the whole Roman Empire! Look around you. These majestic blocks of limestone, quarried from the surrounding quarries, rise on two levels of arches at nearly twenty-one meters in height. Our architects performed a real miracle at the end of the 1st century CE: a perfect symmetry, an ellipse 133 meters long where each line is designed to celebrate the greatness of Rome. But let me explain to you how the show machine works.

Leave aside the fury of the amphitheatre for a moment. Here we are no longer in the realm of blood, but in the realm of the sacred, of perfection and absolute power of Rome. Before you rises the Square House, the most beautiful temple in the whole Empire! Look at that whiteness, that purity. This temple was erected at the very beginning of our century (around the year 4 CE) by an immense man: Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, the son-in-law and chief general of our great Emperor Augustus. But be careful, don't trust its modern name... She's not square! For us, it is a perfect rectangle, a pseudo-peripheral temple of Corinthian style, measuring 26 meters long by 15 meters wide.

After the choking dust of the arena and the solemnity of marble of the Maison Carrée, welcome to the most sacred, oldest and dearest place in the heart of Nîmois: the Source. Long before Rome set foot in Gaul, the Celts of the Arecomic Volcano tribe already worshipped this place. There they worshipped a local god of fertility and healing named Nemausus. He's the one who gave our city its name! This spring of pure water that flows down the hill is the very soul of our city. Without it, nothing would exist. Look what our engineers and our great Emperor Augustus have done with it: a dazzling thermal sanctuary, the heart of our freshwater network!