We had wanted to travel to Venice today, but it was booked out and so we had to stay another night in Avignon. We decided to do some exploring, and nearby Nîmes sounded interesting.
When we arrived we stumbled upon the old Roman arena, which is remarkably preserved and is still in use - for bullfighting. We did the tour, which felt unsafe at some stages (it could use some more railings).
The Roman arena, still is use today.
We headed down the street (which was disgusting - obviously some big event had recently happened), ducked into a nice little cafe for macaroons, and visited the Roman temple; the Maison Carrée ("square house"). Apparently the world's best preserved Roman temple.
We had already bought tickets to see the temple, and we were shocked when we discovered that you could not see any of the interior walls, floor and ceiling of the temple had all been covered up so you couldn't see them at all. Inside the temple is a... movie theatre! We watched the film we had paid for (it was in 3D).
The Maison Carrée, the world's 'best preserved' Roman temple, now a movie theatre.
We wandered up to an absolutely beautiful park - Jardin de la Fontaine. We stumbled across another Roman building, apparently part of a complex of baths.
At the top of the gardens there is the oldest suriving building in France - Tour Magne from 15 BC. Climbing the stairs was probably our most frightening experience yet, but at the top there was a great view.
What remains of Tour Magne.
These stairs are modern compared to the rest of the tower (the insides of the tower were ripped out by a crazy man looking for gold) but are still old, narrow and slippery.
View of Nîmes looking towards the arena.
It was fascinating visiting Nîmes - it feels very different from Avignon. We don't know why so many Roman buildings in the area survived. Also nearby is Pont du Gard - the tallest surviving Roman aquaduct - which we didn't have time to visit.
For dinner we had Chinese back in Avignon.
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