Nimes, France

Friday May 3rd we spent in Nimes.  Nimes is a very old city in France and has been inhabited for thousands of years.  The Romans were there and built many large structures that are still around today.  And those were our main focal points of the day.  

Jardins de la Fontaine

This was not a Roman creation, but was built in the 18th century on the recently discovered ancient site.  It was very much French in its creation--the statues and vases. 

It was so green and beautiful!

 I had never seen a black swan  before--it was beautiful!

Le Temple de Diane

The temple of Diane is kind of a mystery.  It's exact role is not known.  Even the origin of it's name is also a mystery.  It is fairly well preserved though and was pretty cool to walk around.

 

Tour Magne

After walking around the temple and the gardens, we walked up the many steps to the Tour Magne, or the Roman tower.  It was quite a climb, but it gave us beautiful views of the gardens and the city.

We walked around the base of it and took pictures at all angles.

 Then we went inside and climbed up the spiral staircase to the top.  Once there we got spectacular views of the city.

 After that we walked down the hill.  We found a fun little playground for Glenn to play on before we saw our next Roman building.

La Maison Carree

La Maison Carree, or the Square House, was built in the first century AD.  This is the only fully preserved temple of the ancient world.  The inside has been remodeled though and we saw a 3-D movie inside about different heroes of Nimes throughout the ages.

 The details on this temple were simply amazing!

Amphitheatre

From there, we then walked through the city to the ancient amphitheater.  It too was built in the first century AD, and it's one of the largest and one of the best preserved in the Roman world. More than 20,000 spectators were able to watch the fighting events that took place inside.

We decided to take the audio tour.  We thought it was pretty interesting to walk around and to hear different stories about the events that took place there.  I was amazed at the barbaric things that took place.  I sure am glad I was not part of that society that took pleasure out of seeing humans hunt down animals and even other humans.  We learned that they would make prisoners go in and get hunted down by wild animals.  Too barbaric for my tastes...sorry.

  As we sat and listened, we were also able to watch some actors and dancers as they were preparing for the Annual Roman Games that were being held the following two days there in Nimes.  It was cool to see them practice.  It would've been cool to see the festival, but we had more traveling to do.

We enjoyed our Roman experience in Nimes.  It sure was impressive to see all of those structures that have survived the many years and through generations of men!