A courtyard, a pool and a vault
Eighteen rooms around a courtyard in the old town, with a casino under the stone vault on the far side.
An hôtel particulier of about 1760, built round a court
Like most old houses in Nîmes, it shows a flat front to a narrow street, with a carriage door and a courtyard behind it that you cannot see from outside. A silk merchant lived here first, then a notary kept his office here for most of the twentieth century, and the first guests arrived in 2009.
There are eighteen rooms on four floors. The courtyard has a pool that was a cistern until 1954 and a fig nobody can put a date to, and on the far side is the vaulted room, which has been a stable, a wine store and a garage and is now a casino.
Rooms
Eighteen
Built
About 1760
Arena
Six minutes on foot
Reception
7:00 to 23:00
Four kinds, eighteen in all
Why the house is cooler than the street
The mistral comes down the Rhône valley and passes over the roofs, and it cannot get down into a courtyard this narrow, which is why houses here were built round one. By three on an August afternoon the court is about four degrees cooler than the rue de l'Aspic.
The pool is eight metres by four, unheated, and was the house cistern until the mains arrived in 1954. The fig shades the west side from two o'clock.
A casino under the stone on the far side of the court
The vaulted room belongs to the hotel, is run by it and opens off the courtyard, with no street address of its own. It has seven tables and a bar and is open four evenings a week.
From the desk it is about fifty paces across the court and through the double doors, and you never leave the house to get there. French law puts the age at 18, and an identity document is checked at the door on every visit.
Between the Maison Carrée and the arena
The rue de l'Aspic runs through the middle of the old town. The arena is six minutes south, the Maison Carrée six minutes north, and the Jardins de la Fontaine about fifteen.
The TGV station is twelve minutes on foot. Paris is three hours by train, Marseille an hour and a quarter.