Nîmes with Kids: A 5-Day Itinerary with Roman Ruins, the Pont du Gard, and a Camargue Safari

Nîmes won us over in the first five minutes, walking from the train station to our Airbnb with everything we own on our backs. After Naples, Rome, and Nice, where pushing a stroller sometimes meant balancing on a sidewalk exactly that wide, a city built around pedestrian streets and big open squares was a relief. We ended up with five full days there with our 7- and 2-year-old, and it was one of our favorite stops of the whole trip.

This is those five days laid out as an itinerary, with the logistics we figured out along the way. The full stories are in the day-by-day posts (arriving, the arena and the Pont du Gard, parks and the Tour Magne, and the Camargue and Arles). This one is for planning.

Before you go

Nîmes is small and walkable enough that we never took public transport inside the city, only the bus out to the Pont du Gard. The center is clean stone alleys, wide pedestrian squares, and only the occasional street crossing, which made it easy to get everywhere with a stroller and two tired kids.

The one thing to buy before you start is the three-monument pass, which covers the arena, the Maison Carrée, and the Tour Magne. It's valid for three days, so you can spread the monuments out instead of cramming them into one hot afternoon, which is exactly what we did.

Where we stayed

We stayed in an Airbnb in the city centre, very close to the Maison Carrée and a few doors from a coffee shop called The Coffee, which became our first stop every morning. It was about a 15-minute walk to the train station, and it might have been nicer to be a bit closer. We got used to it quickly, though, and there were lots of cool things right around us.

Being able to walk to everything from the apartment is what made the slower days work, because we could come back for naps and early dinners without it costing us half the afternoon. If you're choosing where to stay, anywhere in the centre puts the arena, the Maison Carrée, and Les Halles within an easy walk, and somewhere between the Maison Carrée and the station would cut down the walk on travel days.

Day 1: The arena and the Maison Carrée

Start with the Arènes de Nîmes, the best-preserved Roman amphitheatre in the world and still a working venue. The self-guided audio tour takes you through the seating rows, up to the top level, into the tunnels where animals and fighters waited, and down onto the sand floor, which they still keep covered in sand the way the Romans did. Remi was hooked on finding the next audio guide number, and Arlo walked most of the loop himself, which at two is always a question mark.

The stairs are steep and uneven in the older sections, so plan on a slow pace with little legs. We let the kids each pick a souvenir from the gift shop as a reward for handling the stairs and the heat (toy bows and arrows, which somehow still fit in Remi's backpack). The whole loop took us less than two hours.

For lunch, BoBun is a small Vietnamese restaurant right near the arena with big portions and a broth the kids ate without complaint. After a popsicle detour, walk over to the Maison Carrée, a Roman temple and one of the best-preserved anywhere. Remi was more interested in her popsicle than the Corinthian columns, so I'd keep this one short and save your energy for the evening in the squares.

Day 2: The Pont du Gard

Give the Pont du Gard a full day. It's a first-century aqueduct bridge about 25 kilometers outside the city, and the far side of the bridge has a rocky river beach where you can swim looking up at the arches. It was one of the best days of our trip, even with the expensive mistake we made getting there.

We took the train to the wrong station and paid for an Uber, when a direct bus from the center of Nîmes costs about €2 a person. I wrote up how to get to the Pont du Gard without a car separately, so you can skip that part of our day.

Day 3: The Jardins de la Fontaine and the Tour Magne

We gave ourselves a slow weekend after the two big days, starting Saturday with brunch at Farmers, near our Airbnb, with açaí bowls, granola, and soft-boiled eggs with avocado toast. From there we walked to the Jardins de la Fontaine, with its canals and fountains at the bottom and wooded paths, lookouts, and a playground as you climb. It's an uphill walk, and Remi got a shoulder ride for part of it. The only bathrooms we found were near the entrance at the bottom of the hill, on the city side, so go before you start the climb.

The Tour Magne sits at the top of the gardens and dates back to before Roman times. The staircase inside is narrow and steep, and I carried Arlo for most of it, but the view from the small platform at the top covers the whole city. My legs felt it for a while afterward, and it was still worth it.

In the afternoon we walked back down to the playgrounds near the central fountain and the train station, with no bigger plan than letting the kids run. They're small city-run playgrounds without names of their own; on Google Maps they show up as "Aire de jeux Ville de Nîmes."

Day 4: Les Halles and a market picnic

Sunday was our market day. Les Halles is a large indoor market open every morning, with stalls for fish, olives and tapenades, cheese, rotisserie chicken, fruit and vegetables, and macarons. We loaded up on picnic supplies, and Remi, who loves olives and capers, asked for the large capers at the tapenade stall. The woman behind the counter was so surprised a kid wanted them that she gave Remi the bag for free.

We carried the picnic uphill to Parc Meynier de Salinelles, near the university. It's small, with a natural playground, picnic tables, paths to explore, and bathrooms, which made it an ideal place to spread out lunch while the kids played. On the way back through town we said yes to the carousel near the central fountain, which is overpriced and creaky and was still a thrill for a 2-year-old.

Day 5: A Camargue safari and an afternoon in Arles

We booked our one big day trip from Nîmes during the slow weekend: a private half-day 4x4 safari in the Camargue, the river delta south of Arles. Our guide, Oliver, adjusted the stops to whatever the kids found most interesting. We watched the gardians (the Camargue cowboys) load bulls onto a truck, fed the white Camargue horses grass through a fence, and had 45 minutes in Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, where Remi went straight into the sea and Arlo slept through the whole stop. The last stretch was an off-road trail where we could stand up through the sunroof and watch flocks of flamingos, which was a thrill for Remi.

We stayed in Arles for the afternoon, and it turned out to be worth a day on its own. The Roman arena is smaller than the one in Nîmes but just as grand, the Jardin d'été has a good playground, and LUMA Arles has three-story indoor twin slides that are free to ride (Remi did about ten runs). Arlo was too short for the slides, so if you have a younger kid, check the height limit with the attendants before you promise a ride. The full day is in our Camargue and Arles post.

Eating out in Nîmes with kids

Restaurants open for dinner around 7pm, and most people eat later than we're used to at home. We didn't see many other kids at restaurants in the evenings, so we cooked at the Airbnb a few nights (one of them ending with Arlo asleep on the couch at 6:30), and on the nights we went out, a drink in one of the squares helped bridge the gap to 7pm.

The places we'd go back to are The Coffee for the morning, BoBun for lunch near the arena, Farmers for brunch, and Heista for small plates at dinner, which our Airbnb host recommended. Les Halles covers everything else if you're cooking or picnicking.

Is Nîmes worth it with kids?

For us it was, mostly because it gave us Roman history on a kid-sized scale in a city that's easy to walk with a stroller. The monuments are close together, the pass lets you spread them out, and there's a park or a playground within reach whenever the kids need a break from old stones. Add Arles and the Camargue as a day trip, and it's one of the easiest places we've found to mix history with time outside. From Nîmes we took the train on to Barcelona, and I'd love to hear where else in the south of France you'd send a family next.