Le Pont du Gard, a Roman wonder, is only to 15 km of Uzes! 10 min of car and you get there, in an exceptional landscape.

The only raison d'être of this aqueduct, work of civil engineering, consisted in supporting a drain leading, on 50 km, water of the sources of the Eure, with the water tower (Castellum) in Nimes.

A layout of 50 km

The layout of the aqueduct must as well as possible marry the physical possibilities imposed by the ground.  However, uneven of approximately 12 m between the departure and the arrival of the drain constrained manufacturers to carry out a true technical prowess, by calculating a slope allowing the gravitating flow of water. On most of its layout, the drain is buried and built into broad distinct arched in semicircular arch and covered by ground.

The walls are local stone hardcores, covered with a coat of plaster of lime mortar, which reduces the parasitic water infiltrations and prevents the roots from penetrating.

Other structures

If it is opposed by a geological or topographic obstacle relief, the drain leaves gradually ground carried by a retaining wall, continuous arcades or a structure.  Between Uzès and Nimes, many works mark out the layout of the aqueduct, whose most imposing without question the Bridge of Gard is.

Materials of the surroundings

It is built with blocks of local stones (a limestone of color yellow clearly, easy to cut) which are extracted from the career of Estel, located at 500 meters downstream from the monument, out of left bank of Gardon.

A technical prowess

The construction of the Bridge of Gard was the most important building site of the aqueduct, perhaps mobilizing a thousand of men during three to five years.  One estimates the volume of stones necessary to his construction at 21.000 cubic meters and his total mass for 50.400 tons! Essentially, the Bridge is in large large-sized stone apparatus, made up assembled without mortar.

A large company

The monument preserves the traces of a rational organization of work: classification of the stones, points of supports of the scaffolding and lifting gear.

An anonymous architect

No index made it possible to know the name of the architect who would have built this monument. Only a Latin message “lie totum corium” on one of the low piles, announces that the totality of the work was measured.

The site was refitted: museum, restaurants, carparks. To take A9 direction starting from Uzès.