Through the centuries, a new dramatized guided tour of the Nîmes arenas

As soon as the gate closes, Lucius Pompeius calls out to the visitors to the arena: “You don’t seem to come from Nemausus?”. With the new theatrical guided tours of the amphitheater, a journey through time begins, with sketches that delve into three eras.

Logically, the gladiator, a retiarius with his pitchfork and his net, evokes the ancient era and the “architectural feats” of the Romans, the arches which could support 34 rows of stands and accommodate 24,000 spectators, protected from the bright sun by a the screen. In a few minutes, he eliminates the clichés about gladiator fights. “A few centuries ago”he recognizes it, it was “barbaric and bloody”. But at the time of the construction of the arenas, the spectacle became a real “entertainment”free to the public.

“Architectural feats”

For Marie-Amélie Delogu, tour guide and scriptwriter, it is important to surprise and not limit yourself to this first era. “We know Antiquity very well, but not everything stopped with the fall of the Roman Empire. It is important to pay homage to all the periods, without which we would not have preserved the arenas.”

By climbing a few steps, visitors cross several centuries, meeting Bernard Aton V of Trencavel, viscount of Agde and Nîmes, at a time when 200 houses were built on the old track, others in the stands . In the Middle Ages, knights and their families lived in the castle that the noble sought to maintain.

Little by little, visitors approach the modern era, meeting Lucie Mazauric, the wife of André Chamson. With emotion, she shares the journey of those who studied the amphitheater, notably her father Félix Mazauric, who took charge of the archaeological museums in 1904 or the architect Henri Revoil who renovated the monument in the 19th century these “keepers of memory” which allow us to continue to marvel today as we did 2,000 years ago.