The Romans
The south of France was colonized by the Romans by around 120 BC in order to expand their trading operations, and they set up substantial settlements at Marseille, Narbonne, Orange, Arles, Frejus, Glanum near St-Remy, and Nice, with a network of roads linking them. The Romans were fine town-planners, linking complexes of buildings with straight roads punctuated by decorative fountains, arches and colonnades. They built essentially in the Greek style, and their large, functional buildings were concerned more with strength and solidity than aesthetic. A number of substantial Roman building works survive: in Nimes you can see the Maison Carree, the best-preserved Roman temple still standing, and the Temple of Diana, one of just four vaulted Roman temples in Europe. Gateways remain at Autun, Orange, Saintes and Reims , and largely intact amphitheatres can be seen at Nimes and Arles . The Pont du Gard aqueduct outside Nimes is still a magnificent and ageless monument of civil engineering, built to carry the town's fresh water over the gorge, and Orange has its massive theatre, with Europe's only intact Roman facade. There are excavated archeological sites at Glanum near St-Remy, Vienne, Vaison-la-Romaine and Lyon .
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