Roman Nîmes: the arena and the Maison Carrée

Nîmes keeps two Roman buildings that have no real rival. The arena, raised around 70 AD, is the best-preserved amphitheatre in the Roman world: two storeys of sixty arches running the whole way round, the seating still there inside, and a bullring and concert venue still using it. Outside, the arcades give a repeating pattern that works at any focal length — stand a couple in one arch and let the row recede.

Four hundred metres north, the Maison Carrée is a complete Roman temple from the first decade AD: portico, columns, pediment, all of it, and added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2023. It faces a bare modern square with Norman Foster's glass Carré d'Art on the far side, and that pairing — Augustan temple reflected in a 1990s glass wall — is the single most interesting frame in the city.

Both face broadly south-west, so the last hours of the day put warm light straight onto the stone. At dawn the squares are genuinely empty, which is the only time the Maison Carrée can be photographed without people on its steps. Midday in summer is hard: white limestone, no shade and thirty-five degrees.

The arena is ticketed per person for entry, and closes or changes hours for concerts and for the Pentecost féria, when the whole town is given over to the event. The Maison Carrée is ticketed inside but free to shoot from the square. Hours, closures and rules on commercial shoots change through the year — check both before setting a time.