Roman Arena of Nimes
— — a ring the centuries still keep warm.
Not only on a wall.
“A Roman amphitheatre in the south of France, two storeys of arches still standing after nearly two thousand years. Built late in the first century AD, the arena once seated twenty-four thousand for gladiator combats and animal hunts. The honey-coloured limestone holds the afternoon light the way southern stone does. Warmer at four, deeper at six. In the centuries between Rome and now, the city built houses inside the arches; in the centuries since, it has hosted bullfights, summer concerts, and the same Roman sun. Nîmes calls itself the French Rome, and the arena is the reason.
Roman Arena of Nimes, 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 Arena of Nîmes sits at the centre of the old town of Nîmes, in the Gard department of Occitanie in southern France, about half an hour west of Avignon and forty minutes from the Mediterranean. Built late in the first century AD, the elliptical structure measures 133 metres long by 101 metres wide and rises two storeys of sixty arches each to a height of twenty-one metres. It is widely regarded as the best-preserved Roman amphitheatre in the world. The city itself was the Roman colony of Nemausus, founded under Augustus on the Via Domitia, the trans-Alpine road that linked Italy to Hispania. Within a short walk are the Maison Carrée and the Jardins de la Fontaine; the Pont du Gard aqueduct lies twenty-five kilometres to the northeast.
The arena is built of soft, pale limestone quarried locally in the hills above Nîmes, the same stone that yielded the Maison Carrée and most of the Roman city. Two storeys of sixty arches, separated by a cornice, rise to twenty-one metres; an inner network of vaulted galleries and staircases, the vomitoria, once allowed twenty-four thousand spectators to enter and clear the seats within minutes. In the fifth century the amphitheatre was fortified into a citadel by the Visigoths; by the eighteenth century several hundred residents lived in houses and two chapels built inside the arches. The houses were cleared from 1809 under Napoleon, and the arena was returned to civic use.
The arena's calendar is built around the Feria de Nîmes, two annual festivals that fill the city with bullfights, music, and close to a million visitors. The Feria de Pentecôte in late May or early June is the larger; the Feria des Vendanges, held over a long weekend in September around the grape harvest, closes the season. Between them, the arena hosts the Festival de Nîmes, an open-air concert programme that has brought Sting, Lenny Kravitz, and other touring artists to the Roman tiers, along with a Great Roman Games reenactment that fills the floor with gladiators and chariots for one weekend in May.