Arena of Nîmes

The Roman amphitheatre of Nîmes rises straight out of the city's streets, an oval 133 metres long and 101 wide, its outer wall 21 metres high and pierced by two storeys of sixty arches. Built around 100 AD, only some twenty years after the Colosseum, it is among the best-preserved Roman amphitheatres anywhere and one of the twenty largest of the roughly four hundred known. In Roman times 24,000 spectators sat on 34 tiers divided into four separate zones, each with its own staircases and corridors, so that crowds could fill and empty the bowl quickly — the vaulted galleries that made this possible are still the most atmospheric part of a visit.

The building owes its survival to the fact that it was lived in. As the Roman city shrank from the fourth century, the arches were walled up and the arena became a fortress, sheltering the townspeople through sieges. A whole neighbourhood grew inside it, with two churches of its own, and even in the eighteenth century some 150 houses were packed into the oval. Francis I had wanted the monument returned to its ancient appearance, but clearance only began in earnest in 1786. Two blocked arches with medieval windows were kept, opposite the Palace of Justice, as a reminder of the walled-town centuries, and the architect Henri Revoil completed the restoration in the mid-nineteenth century.

Since the first bullfight in 1853 the arena has again been a place of spectacle. Two bullfights a year are held during the Feria de Nîmes, with a bronze of the local matador Nimeño II at the entrance, and the summer Festival de Nîmes has brought concerts here since 1997 — Truffaut filmed his first short here, and Depeche Mode, Metallica and Sting are among those who have played to the stone tiers.

Getting there

The arena stands in the centre of Nîmes, in the south of France. Nîmes-Arles-Camargue Airport (FNI) is about 10 km away.