Nîmes

Nîmes

It was about 50 BC that Nîmes became a Roman colony, as witness the earliest coins which bear the abbreviation NEM. COL, "Colony of Nemausus". Some years later a sanctuary and other constructions connected with the fountain were raised on the site. Nîmes was already under Roman influence, though it was Augustus who made the city the capital of Narbonne province, and gave it all its glory.

Augustus gave the town a ring of ramparts six kilometres long, reinforced by fourteen towers, with gates of which two remain today, the Porte Auguste and the Porte de France. The city had an estimated population of 60,000. He had the Forum built and perhaps also the aqueduct. Nothing remains of certain monuments, the existence of which is known from inscriptions or architectural fragments found in the course of excavations. It is known that the town had a civil basilica, a curia, a gymnasium and perhaps a circus. The amphitheatre dates from the end of the 2nd century AD. The family of Roman Emperor Antoninus Pius was originated in Nemausus.

This prosperity was to stay with the town until the end of the 3rd century. Already there was risk of invasion and the decadence of Rome allowed the "barbarian hordes" to be even more audacious. Visigoths, Burgunds and Ostrogoths came one after the other to pillage the riches of the Empire.