Rain and Roman Ruins in Nice

A roving retirement lifestyle is based on the idea of going to new places and seeing new things. The Roman ruins of Cemenelum in Nice, France is one of those places that we can reach without a car. As with most of southern France, Nice has its share of Roman ruins. After being in Nice for a few weeks, we really hadn’t seen anything. Just the Mediterranean and the Vieux Ville (old town). So on this day, we figured we should go have a look at the ruins.

Me and the Never Ending Stairs

The Archaeological Museum and the ruins are in an area of Nice called Cimiez. Cimiez happens to be on the top of a hill, but on the map, it looked like the No. 1 Tram got pretty close. I had been looking forward to taking the trams around town just to have a look around. That made this part of our journey a twofer.

Needless to say, we got the whole taking the tram to Cimiez thing wrong. We took the tram to the end of the line and headed towards an old monastery, cemetery, and the ruins. It was pretty clear from the moment we got off of the tram that there was a very large hill in front of us in the direction we were heading. If we had stopped to think about it, we might have realized beforehand that all really old towns are built on top of defensible hills. Therefore, we should have taken the bus. But, we got this far so we (read me and my cane) decided to go for it.

That decision started the climb of the never-ending staircases. Of course, you know the stairs did end, but it really didn’t feel like it at the time. Just as we got to the top of one set of stairs, we could see the next staircase ascending further up into the mist. But, in for a penny, in for a pound, so we just kept going.

The Cemetery

Finally, we reached the cemetery and the monastery at the top of the hill. Our first stop was a short tour of a sixteenth-century monastery and a cemetery where Henri Matisse is buried.

Visiting the Ruins

After we saw the cemetery, we headed through a park to the ruins of a large Roman Amphitheatre. The park used to be the site of the Nice Jazz Festival and contains statues and monuments to many jazz greats.

The Roman amphitheater was more ruined than other amphitheaters around  France, like Arles and Nimes. However, the Roman baths and the buildings on the other side of the Amphitheatre were very interesting. As with many Roman ruins throughout Europe and the middle east, they were buried as the town grew or dismantled to repurpose the stones. The ruins in Nice were no different.

In Roman times, all the action was up here in what is today the Cimiez neighborhood of Nice. Back then, there was an elaborate Roman city called Cemenelum that was the capital of the Riviera for over 400 years, between the 1st and 4th centuries. Cemenelum was similar in size to Pompeii.

The city had a small army, an amphitheater for 5000 spectators for theater (and gladiators),  a market square and temple (dedicated to Mars!), lots of shops and businesses, elaborate walled homes, and a huge bath/spa complex. Baths were the social hub of every Roman town at that time. Most of the ruins of the ancient city are still buried under the current city, but an impressive bath/spa complex has been excavated.

The Unique Museum

The Matisse museum is in the same area as the Archeological museum but on this day we only had the time and energy for one museum. So we picked the Archeological museum. With the current “confinement” in France, the Matisse museum will have to await our return. The museum itself has a small number of artifacts from the bathes. In addition, it is temporarily filled with very interesting sculptures created by a modern artist named Sacha Sosno.

A Rainy Afternoon

On this particular day, we decided to believe the weather report and didn’t even think to bring our umbrellas. So naturally, when we were leaving the museum it was raining pretty steadily outside. We weren’t going all the way back down the stairs to the tram, so we found a bus that would take us in the right direction. It was really nice to sit down and get out of the rain, in that order.

Mike had a route mapped out, so we took the bus around Cimiez and then descended the hill. Our destination was a tram stop on the opposite side of the line that we took before. Once on the tram, we realized we were heading in the wrong direction, so we toured yet another part of town. After exiting at the next stop, we crossed the street and got back on the right tram headed back toward Vieux Ville.

We were headed to a rehearsal at the Nice Opera House. When we got there, we were happy about the prospect of being dry and sitting down.

Would you have picked the Archeological museum or the Matisse museum if you only had time for one?