The Maison Carré in Nimes is a Roman temple built in 19-16 BC. I had read about it and thought we should stop in Nimes on our way to Carcassonne to take a look. Nimes is not an easy city to negotiate by car. It seemed like there was a roundabout every two meters where we were supposed to take either the first, second, or third exits. By the time we found the underground parking garage, my head was spinning. And the garage was another one of those narrow gauge caverns where I had to twist the car down tight curves at a snails pace to avoid scraping the walls.
When we surfaced to walk to the Roman temple, roadwork was taking place, so we had to devise a reroute through an indoor market where, if we wanted to, we could have picked up some sea bass and a pound of cheese. But I was bent on a mission. The temple was blocks away and downtown Nimes is noisy.
When we got to the square where the temple sits, Ella flashed me a big grin. We suffered the runaround of roundabouts for this?
The temple had lovely Corinthian columns, but the gaps between them were filled in with what seemed to be concrete blocks. It didn’t look like a temple so much as a mausoleum. The spirit of Anubis was still persisting to be my guiding light whether I liked it or not. And inside, the French preservationist cementaros had decided to leave the ceremonial inner sanctum to our imagination. It was just a big empty foreshortened room with some explanatory placards. Out front, up the steps, the temple still retained some of its former majesty.
You’ve retained a bit of your former majesty to😂
You rushed your visit to this corner of France. Nimes also has a Roman amphitheater similar to the one in Arles. And there is also the Pont du Gard, outside of Nimes, which, from its name, is a bridge. But it was also the aqueduct that carried water to Nimes. It is a two-level, many arched structure that is a masterpiece of Roman engineering. I guess to you had to make it to Carcassonne in time to return the car.
Quelle dommage.