les Arenes de Nimes

We then went on to Nîmes to visit ‘Les Arènes’, the really well preserved 1^st century amphitheatre. It was great fun to explore (you could go most anywhere, and there were cool skinny staircases leading to different levels). It was built for gladiator combat, chariot races and even for water sports (according to my book on Provence, it could be flooded!) After the fall of the Rome in ~476, it was used for all sorts of things; a fortress, a prison, knights’ headquarters, and had sketchy houses built in it (its own little fortified town), housing up to 2000 people. The houses were cleared out and it was restored to its past use as a venue for performances, and is used now for bullfights and other such things. It was magnificent and had a very good audio-guide that gave lots of history and great ‘trivia’ about its structure, use and about the society of the age. We also went to the ‘Maison Carrée’, The Square House, which is meant to be the Roman world’s best preserved temple, but we couldn’t see much of any of it, it was covered in scaffolding and corrugated metal being ‘restored’!