On the border between Provence and Languedoc, the name of Nîmes is inescapably linked to two things - denim and Rome. The latter's influence is highly visible in some of the most extensive Roman remains in Europe, while the former (de Nîmes), equally visible on the backsides of the populace, was first manufactured in the city's textile mills, and exported to the southern USA in the nineteenth century to clothe slaves. It's worth a visit, in part for the ruins and, nowadays, for the city's new-found energy and direction, enlisting the services of a galaxy of architects and designers - including Norman Foster, Jean Nouvel and Philippe Starck - in a bid to wrest southern supremacy from neighbouring Montpellier.
The city derives its name from that of a spring in the Roman village. The contemporary coat of arms of the city of Nîmes includes a crocodile chained to a palm tree with the inscription COLNEM, for Colonia Nemausus, meaning the "colony" or "settlement" of Nemausus, the local Celtic god of the Volcae Arecomici. Veterans of the Roman legions who had served Julius Caesar in his Nile campaigns, at the end of fifteen years of soldiering, were given plots of land to cultivate on the plain of Nîmes.
The city was located on the Via Domitia, a Roman road constructed in 118 BC which connected Italy with Spain.
Its name appears in inscriptions in Gaulish as dede matrebo Namausikabo = "he has given to the mothers of Nîmes" and "toutios Namausatis" = "citizen of Nîmes".
