Nîmes

Nîmes grew up around a spring at the foot of Mont Cavalier, where a Gallic oppidum became the capital of the Celtic Volcae Arecomici and took the name of the local water god, Nemausus. Rome conquered the region in the 120s BC and built the Via Domitia through the site, and Nîmes became Colonia Nemausus before 28 BC. Augustus gave it six kilometres of walls with 14 towers, the Maison Carrée was built as a temple of the imperial cult, an aqueduct carried water from the hills to the north across the Pont du Gard, and around AD 100 the amphitheatre rose. Its population is estimated at 50,000–60,000.

The Visigoths took the city in 472, Umayyad forces held it from about 725, and Charles Martel's expedition of 736–737 largely destroyed it before Pepin the Short captured it in 752. Through the Middle Ages the authorities lived inside the shell of the amphitheatre, which became a fortified quarter. In the 16th century Nîmes became a Protestant stronghold, suffering decades of religious violence, including the Michelade massacre.

Prosperity returned in the 17th and 18th centuries with silk and textiles — the twill called serge de Nîmes later gave denim its name — and the Jardins de la Fontaine were laid out. Since 1983 the Foreign Legion's 2nd Infantry Regiment has been garrisoned here, and in 2023 the Maison Carrée joined the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Nîmes calls itself the French Rome, and its monuments are part of daily life rather than set apart: the arena hosts concerts and bullfights, and the Maison Carrée faces Norman Foster's Carré d'Art across a public square. Concerts in the arena have been recorded for live albums by Rammstein and Metallica.

The ferias define the city's calendar and character. Held officially since 1952, the Pentecost feria opens with the Pégoulade parade of floats and brass bands and fills a week with corridas, course camarguaise and street parties; the harvest feria follows in September. Together they are among the most popular festivals in Europe, with more than a million visitors a year by some counts. Spanish-style bullfighting is defended locally as tradition and opposed by others; the course camarguaise, in which raseteurs try to snatch rosettes from a bull's horns, does not kill the animal.

Religious history runs deep: Nîmes was a Protestant stronghold through the Wars of Religion, and the Jewish community, present since at least the seventh century, built the synagogue that still serves the Gard in 1793. Football's Nîmes Olympique and the rugby club RC Nîmes have local followings, and the Tour de France often passes through.

About 152,000 people lived in the commune in 2023, up from about 128,000 in 1990. As prefecture of the Gard the city has a large public sector, and services, commerce and tourism dominate; the textile industry that made it famous has long gone. Nîmes also has two olive appellations, the Nîmes olive and Nîmes olive oil, and the Costières de Nîmes wine appellation lies between the city and the Rhône delta.

Residents live in the Écusson and the 19th-century districts around the boulevards, in suburbs spreading across the plain and in large housing estates on the western hills. Some of those estates face real difficulties; in 2023 city buses stopped serving Pissevin after a shooting and attacks on buses.

Summer shapes the rhythm of the year. Heat drives life into the evenings, with Thursday night markets in the old town, open-air concerts and films in the Jardins de la Fontaine, and terraces full late. The ferias transform the city for days at a time, and in autumn people watch for the heavy Mediterranean rainstorms that can flood the Gard.

Brandade de Nîmes is the dish the city is known for: salt cod worked with olive oil and milk, with potato added in some recipes; the recipe first appears in 1786, when a Nîmes fish lover crushed salt cod with garlic, olive oil and a touch of milk. Olives matter here too — Nîmes olives have their own appellation — and tapenade, puréed or finely chopped olives with capers and sometimes anchovies, is eaten as an hors d'œuvre spread on bread.

From the Camargue to the south comes gardiane de taureau, a stew of Camargue bull meat with olives and red wine. The croquant Villaret, a crunchy biscuit, has been made to a family recipe kept secret since 1775, and pélardon, a goat's cheese from the Cévennes, turns up in local dishes and on cheese boards.

Les Halles de Nîmes, the covered market in the Écusson, is the place for olives, charcuterie and local specialities, and the squares of the old town are lined with café terraces. Costières de Nîmes reds and rosés are the local wines, grown on the stony slopes between the city and the Camargue.