Pont du Gard
— — two thousand years above the river.
Not only on a wall.
“The aqueduct Rome left across the Gardon, north of Nîmes. Three tiers of arches in honey-coloured limestone, the lowest courses laid without mortar, stones cut to hold each other. It carried water from the springs at Uzès for nearly four centuries, then sat for fifteen hundred more while locals crossed the river on its lower deck. The river runs underneath the way it always has. Late afternoon is when the stone warms.
Pont du Gard, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
The place, in three passes.
The Pont du Gard stands in the commune of Vers-Pont-du-Gard, in the Gard department of Occitanie, southern France. It is the surviving bridge of a Roman aqueduct that carried water roughly 50 kilometres from springs near Uzès to the colony of Nemausus, now Nîmes. The bridge crosses the Gardon River on three superimposed tiers of arches and rises 48.8 metres above the riverbed, making it the tallest surviving Roman aqueduct bridge. The aqueduct dropped only about twelve metres over its full length, a tolerance that explains why the section over the gorge had to be carried so high. UNESCO inscribed the site as a World Heritage monument in 1985.
The bridge is built of limestone quarried from the Estel quarry, roughly 600 metres upstream, a soft shell-rich stone that weathers to a warm honey-gold. The lower and middle tiers were laid largely without mortar, blocks fitted dry and held by their own weight and the geometry of the cuts. Some courses still show the projecting bossages the Roman masons left for the scaffolding ropes. In the upper conduit, where water once flowed, the builders used hydraulic mortar and a thick interior lining; sections of the lining survive. The largest blocks weigh several tonnes. The colour darkens through the afternoon and turns amber after the sun is low.
The site sits on the D981 between Remoulins and Uzès, about 25 kilometres northeast of Nîmes and 25 kilometres west of Avignon. Both banks have car parks, a visitor centre on the left bank, and a museum that opened in 2000. Walkers can cross the lower deck of the bridge during the day; access to the upper aqueduct channel runs by guided tour only and requires reservation. The grounds open in every season; admission is charged per vehicle rather than per person. Late afternoon to sunset is when the limestone catches the most colour, and the swimmers who use the Gardon's pebble beach in summer thin out.