Palais Gallien

It was finally the day I leave France, at least for this trip. I managed to visit a lot of places in the city of Bordeaux in half a day. I know that it is not a proper visit since Bordeaux has a lot more to offer than the places I visited, still I will be leaving impressed with this beautiful city. The weather that morning was much better than the very wet weather I had the whole afternoon and evening the previous day. There was still time to go before my flight and I discovered that there was a nearby place which I can still go see.

The Palais Gallien is the ruins of an old Roman amphitheater. It is the oldest Roman ruins in the city of Bordeaux. It was only a short walk from my hotel so I thought it would be worth a visit. The ruins is at a rather quiet part of the city and there weren’t any tourists at all. Not much of the amphitheater was left with only a few arches and walls remaining to show visitors how it was back then. It wasn’t very obvious to me what it was until I looked it up. I had a feeling that it was an amphitheater but the area was too small to be one. The original amphitheater was large enough to accommodate twenty thousand people for gladiatorial combat which was the popular spectator sport at that time. What remains of the amphitheater is fenced off and visitor and just admire the remaining arches. I was lucky I found that place just before I left when I think about how near it was to the hotel.

[xmlgm {http://www.worldwanderings.net/kml/PalaisGallien.kmz} zoom=19]