7 Best Sights in Nimes, Provence

The newest museum in Nîmes is impossible to miss: first for its location, just opposite the Arènes, and second for its exterior featuring a gleaming, translucent facade meant to evoke a Roman toga. Exhibits inside this luminous edifice showcase the city's Roman past with more than 5,000 artifacts, as well as touch screens, interactive displays, and other state-of-the art features that will delight both adults and kids. Highlights include intact mosaics discovered during recent excavations, a model of a domus (Roman house), and a green roof with panoramic views of the amphitheater and all the city's major sites. The sidewalk café is great for a quick lunch or afternoon drink, and the upstairs La Table du 2—which also has impressive views—is a Michelin-starred brasserie that serves lunch and dinner.

A testimony to the taste of the Age of Reason, this elaborate formal garden was created on the site of a once-sacred Roman spring, which was channeled into pools and a canal. The shady haven of mature trees and graceful stonework makes for a lovely approach to the Temple de Diane and the Tour Magne.

On a busy downtown square, this exquisitely preserved temple strikes a timeless balance between symmetry and whimsy, purity of line and richness of decoration. Modeled on the Temple to Apollo in Rome, adorned with magnificent limestone columns and elegant pediments, the Maison Carrée remains one of the most noble surviving structures of ancient Roman civilization anywhere.

Built around 5 BC and dedicated to Caius Caesar and his brother, Lucius, the temple has survived subsequent use as a medieval meeting hall, an Augustinian church, a storehouse for Revolutionary archives, and a horse shed. In addition to hosting temporary art and photo exhibitions, it contains a permanent display of photos and drawings of ongoing archaeological work. Don't miss the splendid Roman fresco of Cassandra (being dragged by her hair by a hunter) that was discovered in 1992 and carefully restored. There's also a fun 3-D projection of the heroes of Nîmes.

Nîmes's oldest museum, inaugurated in 1895 in a listed 17th-century chapel, contemplates the natural and human sciences via a vast collection of stuffed beasts, menhirs, and other wonders. The setting has barely changed since the 1930s, when France was a still a vast colonial power. There's a planetarium, too.

Housed in the 17th-century bishop's palace opposite the cathedral, this museum shows off garments embroidered in the exotic and vibrant style for which Nîmes was once famous. Look for the 18th-century jacket made of blue serge de Nîmes, the renowned fabric—now simply called denim—from which Levi Strauss first fashioned blue jeans.

This Roman ruin dates from the end of the 1st century BC and is thought to have been part of a larger complex that is still unexcavated. In the Middle Ages, Benedictine nuns occupied the building before it was converted into a church. Destruction came during the Wars of Religion.

At the far end of the Jardins de la Fontaine are the remains of a tower the emperor Augustus had built on Gallic foundations; it was probably used as a lookout post. Despite losing 30 feet in height over the course of time, the tower still provides fine views of Nîmes for anyone energetic enough to climb the 140 steps.