Rome, to protect its ally Massilia and ensure communications with Spain, annexes a strip of territory between the Cevennes and the Alps in 121, establishing the first Roman province in France, Gallia Transalpina ("Gaul across the Alps"), an area roughly equivalent to the modern Provence and Languedoc, and later known as Gallia Narbonensis ("Narbonese Gaul").

The Provençal city of Nimes, located about 65 miles (105 kilometers) northwest of Massilia, comes under Roman control but its continued importance is assured by its location on the Via Domitia, the main Roman road between northern Italy and Spain.

Nimes, which derives its name from that of a spring in the Roman village, is located on the Via Domitia, a Roman road constructed in 118 BCE that connects Italy to Spain.

The hill named Mt.

Cavalier is the site of the early oppidum, which gave birth to the city.

During the third and second centuries BCE, a surrounding wall was built, closed at the summit by a dry-stone tower, which was later incorporated into the masonry of the Tour Magne.

The Wars of Gaul and the subsequent fall of Marseille in 49 BCE had allowed Nîmes to regain its autonomy under Rome.

Veterans of the Roman legions who had served Julius Caesar in his Nile campaigns, at the end of fifteen years of soldiering, had been given plots of land to cultivate on the plain of Nîmes, which became a Roman colony sometime before 28 BCE, as witnessed by the earliest coins, which bear the abbreviation NEM.

COL, "Colony of Nemausus.

Soon after the residents of Nimes receive Roman citizenship, the city is replanned with an organized street grid.

Many of the Roman provinces, graced with new temples, are among the beneficiaries of the Augustan building boom.

Agrippa donates to the city of Nîmes in 16 the Maison Carrée ("square house"), a hellenized Etrusco-Roman structure with six Corinthian columns under the Pediment at either end.

It is pseudoperipteral in that twenty engaged columns are embedded along the walls of the cella.

Above the columns, the architrave is divided by two recessed rows in three levels with ratios of 1:2:3.

Egg-and-dart decoration divides the architrave from the frieze.

The frieze is decorated with fine ornamental relief carvings of rosettes and acanthus leaves beneath a row of very fine dentils.

Raised on a 2.85 meter-high podium, the temple dominates the forum of the Roman city, forming a rectangle almost twice as long as it is wide, measuring 26.42 meters by 13.54 meters.

The façade is dominated by a deep portico or pronaos almost a third of the building's length.

A large door (6.87 meters high by 3.27 meters wide) leads to the surprisingly small and windowless interior, where the shrine was originally housed.

The temple owes its preservation to the fact that it was rededicated as a Christian church in the fourth century, saving it from the widespread destruction of temples that followed the adoption of Christianity as Rome's official state religion.

It subsequently became a meeting hall for the city's consuls, a canon's house, a stable for government-owned horses during the French Revolution and a storehouse for the city archives.

It became a museum after 1823.

Its French name derives from the archaic term carré long, literally meaning a "long square", or oblong—a reference to the building's shape.

The Maison Carrée is today one of the best preserved temples to be found anywhere in the territory of the former Roman Empire.

The much admired Roman temple later known as the Maison Carrée in Nîmes, built around 19-16 BCE by Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, who had also been the original patron of the Pantheon in Rome, is rededicated in CE 1 or 2 to Gaius and Lucius Caesar, the grandsons of Augustus.

As the two brothers are the heirs to Augustus, they have promising legal and military careers.

In the year 2, Gaius is sent to the east and Lucius to the west.

Hilderic, Governor of Nimes, revolts against Wamba, and many Jews join him.

One Duke Paul is sent from Toledo to put down the rebellion, but converts instead to Judaism.

The rebellion fails, however, and …

…Nîmes.

Charles Martel, though having failed to capture the Umayyad city of Narbonne, has devastated most of the other principal settlements of Septimania, including Nîmes, …

The disturbances and disorders in Spain following the Berber Revolt also allow the Franks to invade the strategic strip of Septimania in 752, hoping to deprive Andalusians of their easy launching pad for raids into Francia.

Pepin heads south in a military expedition down the Rhone valley in 752 and, after securing the allegiance of Count Ansemund, receives the submission of eastern Septimania (i.e.

Nîmes, …

An anti-Frankish reaction led by Ermeniard kills Ansemund in 754, but the rebellion dies without success and one Radulf is designated as the new count by the Frankish king.

The Comet of 1729, also known as C/1729 P1 or Comet Sarabat, is discovered in the constellation of Equuleus by Father Nicolas Sarabat, a professor of mathematics, at Nîmes in the early morning of August 1, 1729.

Observing with the naked eye, Sarabat sees an object resembling a faint, nebulous star: he is at first unsure if it is a comet or part of the Milky Way.

Moonlight interferes with Sarabat's observations until August 9, but after recovering the object and attempting to detect its motion without the aid of any measuring instruments, he becomes convinced that he has found a new comet.

A non-periodic comet with an absolute magnitude of −3, the brightest ever observed for a comet, it is therefore considered to be the largest comet ever seen.