Cities Through Time

The city's emblem is a chained crocodile, a reference to Octavian's victory over Cleopatra's fleet. Its appetite for grand gestures has hardly faded: the two-thousand-year-old Roman arena still welcomes audiences, now for concerts and bullfights rather than gladiators. Nearby, a temple stands so perfectly preserved that it almost looks like a reconstruction.

Walking through Nîmes means moving through several eras at once. Roman columns face the library's modern glass cube, while lunch traditionally brings brandade de morue, prepared as though the recipe arrived with the city walls. A glass of Costières de Nîmes completes the picture, from a terroir poised between Provence and Languedoc and carrying something of both.

The day begins with a structure built two thousand years ago and intended to last. Its builders clearly knew what they were doing. Nearby, a wine estate stands directly over the remains of an ancient aqueduct, with history quite literally beneath your feet.

The town that follows makes haste feel almost impossible: a terrace above the tiled roofs and a lunch with no reason to check the time. Afterwards come streets that remember popes and kings, and a sunset that always seems to linger for dramatic effect.

On the way, we stop somewhere that seems to follow its own version of time: perhaps a Cathar village held between cliffs, with a canyon and an old bridge that has seen more than it reveals; perhaps a canal town where the cathedral rises above masts moored only a few steps away.

Then the fortress appears, its double ring of walls so formidable that even ambitious conquerors often preferred negotiation to attack. Inside is a living medieval town rather than a museum: narrow streets, small shops and lunch in the shade of the towers. Cassoulet is said to have begun during a long siege, when the defenders put whatever remained into one pot. Here, choosing the wine is almost a discipline: a robust Corbières or Minervois, followed by Blanquette de Limoux, the sparkling wine locals insist predates Champagne by a century.

Nearby, the Canal du Midi recalls the moment when seventeenth-century engineers reimagined what inland navigation could be.