Maison Carrée: An Augustan Roman Temple in Nîmes
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.4
- Popularity
- High
- Country
- France
- Primary era
- Classical
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Classical
- Civilizations
- Roman
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Temple
On this page15 sections
History
Maison Carrée is a Roman temple in Nîmes, France, ancient Nemausus, built under Augustus between 10 BC and AD 4 in the Corinthian architectural order of the early Roman Empire. It stood at the southern end of the city forum and formed the second major centre of the imperial cult in Nîmes, alongside the Sanctuary of the Fountain. The imperial cult was the religious veneration of the emperor and his household, and expressed loyalty to Roman rule in provincial cities.
Augustan foundation and dedication
Construction began during the reign of Augustus, the first Roman emperor, and the temple was completed in the early first century AD. It was dedicated to Gaius Caesar and Lucius Caesar, Augustus’s grandsons and adopted heirs, whose premature deaths shaped the monument’s purpose. The dedication or rededication took place around AD 4 to 7.
Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, Augustus’s closest adviser and military associate, served as the patron of Nemausus and its official defender before the Roman Senate. After Agrippa died, this patronage passed to his elder son Gaius. When Gaius and Lucius also died, the people of Nîmes received Roman approval to honour them with the temple.
The original dedication was written in bronze letters attached to the front frieze and architrave. The letters were removed during the medieval period, but their fixing holes remained. In 1758, the Nîmes scholar Jean-François Séguier reconstructed the inscription from those traces. Its first line indicates completion around AD 2 or 3, while a second line, added later, gives a date around AD 4 or 5. Another inscription once located nearby has been lost.
The temple continued to serve the imperial cult for generations after Augustus’s death. Emperors of successive periods were venerated under the title of Augustus, preserving the religious idea established at the monument’s foundation.
Medieval and early modern transformations
From the eleventh through the sixteenth century, the building served as Nîmes’s consular house, a civic institution comparable to a town hall. It was then known as the Capitol or Cap-duel. Later alterations divided the interior into rooms and inserted two floors. The building subsequently became a residence, a stable, and an Augustinian church.
The clergy owned Maison Carrée during part of this period, while the Duchess of Uzès sought to transform it into a tomb for her husband, Antoine de Crussol. These successive uses altered the interior but allowed the Roman structure to remain in use rather than being abandoned.
Restoration and public uses
During the French Revolution, Maison Carrée became a meeting place for the Directory, the executive government that ruled France in the later revolutionary period. From 1800 to 1807, it served as the prefecture of the Gard department.
The building gradually recovered its earlier appearance during nineteenth-century restoration campaigns associated with Victor Grangent. It housed the Musée des Beaux-Arts of Nîmes from 1821 to 1907 and hosted exhibitions of ancient objects in 1824. A Latin inscription on the west side records repairs funded by the king and the citizens in 1822. Maison Carrée was classified as a French historic monument in 1840.
Restoration between 1988 and 1992 included a new roof and the clearance of the surrounding square, which revealed the outlines of the Roman forum. The façades were restored again from 2006 to 2010, and the overall campaign concluded in 2011 after four years and more than 44,000 hours of work. The interventions returned much of the stone’s whiteness and considered the possible reinstatement of the original bronze dedication letters.
In 1993, Sir Norman Foster designed Carré d’Art, a modern art gallery and public library opposite the temple, and reshaped the adjoining square as an intentional architectural counterpart. Carré d’Art replaced Nîmes’s city theatre, which had burned in 1952. Maison Carrée’s interior is now arranged as an interpretive space presenting the monument’s history. Until 2021, it instead contained a three-dimensional film about Roman Nîmes.
World Heritage recognition
In September 2023, Maison Carrée was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List under criterion (iv), as part of the property named “The Maison Carrée of Nîmes,” reference number 1569. The inscription recognizes the building as an exceptionally preserved Augustan temple of the imperial cult and as an important monument in the transmission of Roman architecture and imperial ideology into the provinces. It is managed by Edeis under a public-service delegation and monitored by a scientific committee led by the City of Nîmes.
Remains
Maison Carrée is a medium-sized provincial temple raised on a high podium and organized around a strongly emphasized front porch. Its rectangular plan measures 26.42 metres in length and 13.54 metres in width, making it nearly twice as long as it is wide. The building is Corinthian, an order distinguished by elaborate capitals carved with acanthus leaves, and is both hexastyle, with six columns across the front, and pseudo-peripteral, with engaged columns attached to the cella walls rather than a completely free-standing colonnade.
Temple structure
Podium, steps, and colonnade
The temple stands on a podium approximately 2.65 metres high, giving the structure a raised position above the surrounding ground. A single staircase of fifteen steps leads to the entrance. Thirty columns, each about 9 metres high, form the exterior order. Six free-standing Corinthian columns stand beneath each pediment, while twenty engaged columns are incorporated into the walls of the cella, the main enclosed sanctuary room of a classical temple.
Porch and sanctuary
The deep pronaos, or entrance porch, occupies almost one-third of the building’s length and gives the front façade its commanding architectural emphasis. Its present ceiling is modern, following an early nineteenth-century restoration that introduced a new covering designed in a Roman style.
Behind the porch lies the cella, which measures 10.50 by 16 metres. This small, windowless sanctuary originally held the statue or statues of the honoured deity or deities. Ceremonies took place around an altar positioned in front of the entrance. The original interior decoration has not survived. The ancient cella entrance was a large door approximately 6.87 metres high and 3.27 metres wide, while the present door dates from 1824.
Entablature and carved decoration
The architrave is divided into three bands whose proportions follow a 1:2:3 sequence. Egg-and-dart ornament separates the architrave from the frieze. On three sides, the frieze carries finely carved rosettes and scrolling acanthus leaves beneath a delicate row of dentils. The entablature and the Corinthian capitals remain the principal surviving elements of the temple’s exterior decoration.
The plan and ritual arrangement draw on Etruscan traditions, while the Corinthian order and several aspects of the design reflect Greek influence. The pseudo-peripteral form was a Roman solution established in Italy by the early first century BC. Maison Carrée’s design is closely associated with the Temple of Apollo in Rome, for which it is regarded as a reduced-scale model. The Temple of Mars Ultor provided a model for its Corinthian colonnade and capitals, while the frieze imitates the acanthus-scroll decoration of the Ara Pacis.
Roof and exterior survival
The roof was replaced in 1992 with a faithful reproduction of the ancient covering. It uses large flat tiles called tegulae and curved channel tiles called imbrices, which were moulded by hand and laid over the joints between the flat tiles. The exterior has survived intact, while the interior was changed by the building’s many later uses and alterations.
Forum setting
Temple precinct
In the Roman period, the temple stood within the forum’s bounded precinct. The clearance of the surrounding square in the late twentieth century exposed the outlines of this civic space and clarified the temple’s original setting. Until the nineteenth century, adjoining buildings formed part of a larger complex around Maison Carrée. Their demolition restored the building’s separation from its surroundings, approximating its spatial independence in the Roman period.
Forum buildings
The forum extended for approximately 80 metres. Double porticoes ran along its eastern and western sides, while a blind wall with pilasters closed the southern side. At the northern end stood a rectangular building measuring 18 by 14 metres, now identified as the Roman curia, the meeting place of the city council.
Later architectural influence
Maison Carrée’s surviving form influenced later neoclassical buildings, including the Church of the Madeleine in Paris, Saint Marcellinus Church in Rogalin, and the Virginia State Capitol. Thomas Jefferson had a stucco model of the temple made in 1785, reflecting the building’s role in the transmission of Roman architectural ideas into the modern period.
