Sights in Languedoc Roussillon
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Roman Amphitheatre
Built around AD 100 to seat 24,000 spectators, this magnificent amphitheatre is wonderfully preserved, even retaining its upper storey. Its system of passages and exits are engagingly called vomitories and were designed so patricians attending combats never had to rub shoulders with the plebs up top. It lives on as Les Arènes, a sporting and cultural venue.
Les Arènes lives on as a frequent sporting and cultural venue - an excellent thing in itself though the scaffolding and temporary barriers do detract from its appeal as a historical site. Buy your ticket at the reception point, tucked into its northern walls.
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Les Arènes
Nîmes’ magnificent Roman amphitheatre, the best preserved in the whole of the Roman Empire, was built around AD 100 to seat 24,000 spectators. It’s easy to forget, as one marvels at the architectural accomplishments of the Romans, what a nasty streak they had too. The arena hosted animal fights to the death, stag hunts, man against lion or bear confrontations and, of course, gladiatorial combats. In the contemporary arena, it’s only the bulls that get killed. An advance of a kind, you might say.
There’s a mock-up of the gladiators’ quarters and, if you time it right, you’ll see a couple of actors in full combat gear slugging it out in the arena.
Buy your tick…
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Place Royale du Peyrou
Place Royale du Peyrou is a wide, tree-lined esplanade. At the eastern end lies the Arc de Triomphe (1692) and at the western end lies the Château d'Eau. Leading from this hexagonal water tower is the 18th-century Aqueduc de St-Clément, under which there's an organic food and second-hand books market on Saturday and pétanque (a game not unlike lawn bowls played with heavy metal balls on a sandy pitch; also called boules) most afternoons.
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Palais des Rois de Majorque
The Palais des Rois de Majorque sits on a small hill. Symbol of Perpignan's late-medieval splendour but now echoing and sparsely furnished, the palace was built in 1276 for the ruler of the newly founded kingdom. It was once surrounded by extensive fig and olive groves and a hunting reserve, both lost once Vauban's formidable citadel walls enclosed the palace. Pick up a guide sheet as you enter and climb the 70 steps of Tour de l'Hommage for a sweeping panorama of the Pyrenees and Mediterranean.
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Casa Païral
Casa Païral, the museum of Roussillon and Catalan folklore, occupies Le Castillet, a 14th-century red-brick town gate. Once a prison, it's the only vestige of Vauban's fortified town walls, which encircled the city until the early 1900s. The museum houses bits and pieces of everything Catalan - from traditional bonnets and lace mantillas to a 17th-century kitchen. From the rooftop terrace there are great views of the old city and citadel.
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Serre Amazonienne
A 10-minute walk from Agropolis, this is a spectacular appendix to Montpellier's zoo. A humid hothouse replicates the Amazonian rainforest. Piranha and alligators swim in the first two tanks but it gets friendlier as you progress. Stars include a pair of bright-eyed young leopards, a family of Bolivian squirrel monkeys and flitting bats. Afterwards, you can explore the rest of the zoo, France's second-largest, for free.
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Agropolis
Agropolis, 4km north of the centre, is all about food and how people around the world grow it. Historically, it follows our progression from hunter-gatherer to supermarket shopper. Fascinating stuff, it's instructive, enjoyable and pitched at both children and adults. For this and Serre Amazonienne, take tram 1 to the St-Eloi stop, from where a regular shuttle bus does a circular route.
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La Grande Motte
Further northwards, about 20km southeast of Montpellier, is La Grande Motte. Purpose-built on the grand scale back in the 1960s to plug the tourist drain southwards into Spain, its architecture, considered revolutionary at the time, now comes over as fairly heavy and leaden, contrasting with the more organic growth of adjacent Grau du Roi, deeper rooted and a still-active fishing port.
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Hôtel de Ville
Place de la Loge has three fine stone structures. Sandwiched between La Loge de Mer and the Palais de la Députation, once seat of the local parliament, is the Hôtel de Ville with its typically Roussillon pebbled façade of river stones. Pass by on summer weekends and you may well see locals of all ages dancing the graceful sardane, folk dance of the Catalans.
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Archaeological Museum
The Musée d'Archéologie has some interesting Roman and pre-Roman tombs, mosaics, inscriptions and artefacts unearthed around Nîmes. It also houses a hotchpotch of artefacts from Africa, piled high and tagged with yellowing captions such as 'Abyssinia' and 'Dahomey'. In the same building, the Natural History Museum has a musty collection of stuffed animals.
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Réserve de Bisons d'Europe
Near the small village of Ste-Eulalie-en-Margeride, around 40 bison roam freely. Visitors, on the other hand, must follow a 50-minute guided tour, either by horse-drawn carriage (per adult/child €12.50/7) or, in winter, by sledge (€14.50/8). From mid-June to September, you can follow a self-guided 1km walking path (per adult/child €6/4) around the periphery.
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Musée Fabre
A delightfully spacious, superbly lit venue with one of France's richest collections of European works from the 16th century onwards, plus seven galleries of bright, dynamic 20th-century art. Its annexe, the recently opened Département des Arts Décoratifs displays in context elegant 18th- and 19th-century furniture, ceramics and jewellery.
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Palavas-les-Flots
The closest beaches to Montpellier are at Palavas-les-Flots, 12km south of the city and very much Montpellier-on-Sea in summer. Take TaM bus No 131 from the Port Marianne tram stop. Heading north on the coastal road towards Carnon, you stand a good chance of seeing flamingos hoovering the shallows of the lagoons on either side of the coastal D21.
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Tour Magne
The crumbling shell of the 30m-high Tour Magne was raised around 15 BC. Built as a display of imperial power, it’s the largest of a chain of towers that once punctuated the city’s 7km-long Roman ramparts. At the top of its 140 steps, there’s an orientation table to help you interpret the magnificent panorama of Nîmes.
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Maison Carrée
The Maison Carrée is a remarkably well preserved rectangular Roman temple, constructed around AD 5 to honour Emperor Augustus’ two adopted sons. Within, a 22-minute 3D film, Héros de Nîmes, is screened every half-hour. An epic piece of flummery subtitled in English and French, it calls up characters from the city’s history.
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Cathédrale St-Jean
Topped by a typically Provençal wrought-iron bell cage, Cathédrale St-Jean, begun in 1324 and not completed until 1509, has a flat facade of red brick and smooth, zigzagging river stones. The cavernous single nave is marked by the fine carving and relative sobriety of its Catalan altarpiece. For centuries, Perpignan believers have venerated the engagingly naive statue of the Virgin and child in the chapel of Nostra Senyora dels Correchs in the north aisle.
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Château Comtal
The entrance fee lets you look around the castle itself, enjoy an 11-minute film and join an optional 30- to 40-minute guided tour of the ramparts (tours in English, July and August). Descriptive panels around the castle, in both French and English, are explicit. For more detail, invest in an audioguide (1/2 people €4/6).
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Musée Archéologique
Nîmes' archaeological museum brings together Roman and pre-Roman tombs, mosaics, inscriptions and artefacts unearthed in and around the city. It also houses a hotchpotch of artefacts from Africa, piled high and tagged with yellowing captions such as 'Abyssinia' and 'Dahomey'.
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Cathédrale St-Pierre
To the north of place Royale du Peyrou, off blvd Henri IV, is the Jardin des Plantes (off blvd Henri IV) (1593), France's oldest botanic garden. Opposite the the Jardin des Plantes is Cathédrale St-Pierre with its disproportionately tall 15th-century porch.
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Musée d'Histoire Naturelle
Sharing the same building as the Musée Archéologique, this museum has a musty collection of stuffed animals gazing bleakly out. Only the custodians, protected from visitors inside their own glass case, have life.
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Parc du Gévaudan
Wolves once prowled freely through the Lozère forests but today you'll see them only in this sanctuary, in Ste-Lucie, 7km north of Marvejols. The park sustains around 100 Mongolian, Canadian, Siberian and Polish wolves living in semi-freedom.
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La Loge de Mer
La Loge de Mer was constructed in the 14th century and rebuilt during the Renaissance. At various times Perpignan's stock exchange and maritime tribunal, its ground floor is now occupied by the stylish café-restaurant Le France.
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La Cité des Oiseaux
This bird park, 800m east of the Cité walls, has more than 300 different species. Raptors, swans and parrots swooping over the audience provide in-flight entertainment and there's also a small pack of wolves.
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Musée du Vieux Nîmes
In the 17th-century episcopal palace, this small museum has, in addition to the usual period costumes and furniture, a whole room showcasing denim, with smiling pin-ups of Elvis, James Dean and Marilyn Monroe.
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Campo Santo
Immediately south of the cathedral (leave by a small door in the south aisle) is the early-14th-century Campo Santo, France's largest and oldest cloister-cemetery, lined with white-marble Gothic niches.
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