La Maison Carrée

Inspired by the temples of Apollo and Mars Ultor in Rome, the harmony of its proportions is seductive.

The only completely preserved temple in the ancient world, the Maison Carrée measures 26 meters long by 15 wide by 17 meters high. The ceiling of the pronaos dates from the early 19th century; the present door was built in 1824.

The Maison Carrée owes its exceptional state of preservation to its uninterrupted use since the 11th century as a consular house, stable, apartment and church. After the French Revolution, it became the headquarters of the first prefecture of the Gard, before being converted into the departmental archives and becoming Nîmes' first museum in 1823.

The square was redesigned in 1993 by Carré d'Art architect Jean Bousquet, Lord Norman Foster, to create a spatial unity between the two buildings.

Restoration of the Maison Carrée, begun in 2006, was completed in 2010.

After renovating the roof in 1992 with hand-molded tiles based on the ancient model, the aim was to restore the lustre of the building's facades and floor, which had been exposed to the effects of frost and pollution.

This restoration campaign will have been the most extensive in a century: after the south facade in 2006, which constituted an experimental phase enabling us to refine our intervention techniques, it was the turn of the west facade in 2007/2008, then the east facade in 2008/2009, before tackling the main facade (north side).

It took more than four years and almost 44,000 hours of work for the sculptors and stonemasons, under the supervision of Thierry Algrin, chief architect of the Monuments Historiques, to breathe new life into the Maison Carrée.

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