But tourists can join a “Denim from Nîmes” tour that includes the store, workshop and the historic textile exhibits in the town museum. Now, a century after the city’s textile industry wound up, the looms are working once more: just two in Guillaume’s little workshop on the outskirts of Nîmes. It is denim, which gets its name from Serge de Nîmes – the hardy cloth the town’s weavers began spinning in the 17th century. Ten years ago, Guillaume Sagot returned from Paris to his hometown, intent on re-establishing the fabric that made Nîmes famous. Then, best of all, there is the jeans shop. I stop at the Maison de la Brandade, to browse the local speciality of salty gloop made from cod. Mason de la Brandade is just one of the many independent shops that are a delight to browse (Photo: Nîmes Tourism) Walking the streets of the old town, familiar international or even national brands are a rare sight. Having established his burger stall, Chez Jo, in Les Halles, he is due to open a bigger place in the old town soon. Johannes is a Frenchman who went to Dallas and came second in the World Burger Championship, which is a bit like an American winning the award for best Champagne – or cheese. Outside, having admired Domingo’s knife shop (great, but I’d never get them on the plane), it’s off for coffee with Johannes Richard (inset), a burly 32-year-old who looks like, and indeed is, a man who loves his rugby. The market has a businesslike kerfuffle, as Nîmois browse the stalls with that special, serious look French people have when thinking about their dinner. But his is an eclectic and, indeed, international range. He is not hiding the fact, with a tricolour collar on his white chef’s jacket and patriotic red, white and blue trainers. Les Halles des Nîmes is a gem: 74 stalls, including a couple of cafés and the emporium run by one of the Meilleur Ouvriers de France – a champion cheesemaker, Vincent Vergne. Into the old town, you take a journey from Roman-ness to the ultimate expression of Frenchness – the market. Opposite the arena is the new Musée de la Romanité – a really imaginative museum that combines archaeological finds (including a truly stunning villa mosaic depicting the hunt of the bacchae) with subsequent and contemporary expressions of “Roman-ness”. This isn’t where sensitive attendees went to throw up it was a clever piece of Roman crowd control which allowed patricians and plebs to be expressed from the narrow walkways and tunnels at different times. A sign on the wall offers some light relief: it directs you to the vomitoires. But, as at Rome’s Colosseum, I find it hard to suppress a shudder as I emerge into the bright sunlight of the arena, thinking of the miseries and torture of humans and beasts that went on here. Today’s Arena de Nîmes stages rock concerts and historical reconstructions. Then you are at the arena, an amphitheatre of the kind conferred on all significant Roman cities in the era of bread and circuses. On your left is the square house, the Maison Carée, a compact, intact 1st-century temple that is on the shortlist for a Unesco heritage crown. The stroll down the canal takes you into the main thoroughfare of Roman Nîmes. If your room budget doesn’t go north of €100, you have plenty of options – and nice ones too. With civilised prices that look bargainous when compared with those in Avignon or Aix en Provence, Nîmes is not an expensive city. ![]() ![]() The Imperatur may have a Pierre Gagnaire restaurant and a Cordage spa, but it is an intimate, unflashy kind of place. But this is not Cannes-swish or Bordeaux-smart. On the other is L’Imperatur, Nîmes’ only five-star hotel. A crescent of fine townhouses – a touch of Bath here in the deep south – overlook the canal on one side. This is the most imperial area of modern Nîmes. That fed the waterways in the modern Jardins de la Fontaine, where the remains of the Temple of Diana remain (a structure that greatly impressed the Italian architect Palladio when he visited) below the Tour de Magne, a Celtic watchtower greatly extended by the Roman emperor Augustus. ![]() The mighty aqueduct, now named the Pont du Gard, rises in three majestic limestone tiers in the countryside to the north. Pont du Gard is an ancient Roman aqueduct north of Nîmes (Photo: Pawel Toczynski/The Image Bank RF/Getty)
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