When to go to Uzès and the Pont du Gard?
→ The detailed month-by-month page, with real weather records
Best time: May to June and September to October
At a glance
Why go to Uzès and the Pont du Gard?
Uzès was long the secret of people from Nîmes and Avignon, and something of that remains: a small town of 8,500 people, pedestrianised at its heart, where you come to wander aimlessly between grand townhouses, an arcaded square and a ducal castle that is still lived in. Here the architecture tells of the past wealth of a merchant and bishop's town, and the Saturday market is a reminder that the countryside is never far away, with truffles in winter, melons in summer, and olives and goat's cheeses all year round.
Around it, the Pays d'Uzès is a garrigue of holm oaks and vines where every village has its tower or castellas. To the south, the Pont du Gard, the tallest known aqueduct bridge of the Roman world, is only twenty minutes away by road. To the north, Lussan and its Concluses show a wilder face, between hilltop village and dry gorges. It is a destination for couples in search of honey-coloured stone and market tables, and for families who alternate heritage in the morning with a swim in the Gardon in the afternoon.
The area also lends itself to cycling, along the small garrigue roads and greenways, and to pottery lovers, with Saint-Quentin-la-Poterie a few kilometres away. Finally, Avignon, Nîmes and Arles are less than an hour away: Uzès makes a quiet base for exploring the whole southern Rhône valley, with the bonus of returning each evening to a town that goes to bed early.
Map of Uzès and the Pont du Gard: what is where?
The map shows the 6 places covered in this guide, to picture the distances and plan your route.
- Duché d'Uzès
- Tour Fenestrelle
- Place aux Herbes
- Pont du Gard
- Eure Valley
- Lussan
How much does a trip to Uzès and the Pont du Gard cost?
| Style | Per day | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Backpacker | €55-80 per day | campsite on the banks of the Gardon or a simple room, market shopping, the Pont du Gard on foot or by bike, the Eure Valley, Lussan and the Concluses, which cost nothing. |
| Comfort | €110-160 per day | charming hotel in Uzès, one restaurant meal a day, a tour of the Duché, parking and museum at the Pont du Gard, the Haribo museum with the children, a canoe trip down the Gardon. |
| Premium | €250 and up per day | château hotel or luxury guesthouse with a pool, gourmet dinner, private visit to a wine estate, truffles in season. Outside July and August, prices drop noticeably. |
Cards are accepted almost everywhere, but bring cash for the Saturday market and small producers.
Is Uzès and the Pont du Gard safe?
Uzès and its surroundings are very safe. The main risks are natural: the heat of July and August, often above 35°C in the afternoon, means visiting early, drinking plenty and seeking shade in the hottest hours. The autumn Cévennes storms (épisodes cévenols) cause very rapid flooding of the Gardon and its tributaries: never venture into a riverbed or onto a submerged ford, and respect road closures. At the Pont du Gard, you swim at your own risk: the depth varies and the current can be strong after a storm. In summer, access to wooded hills may be restricted when there is a fire risk, and fires are banned everywhere in the garrigue. Keep an eye on your belongings in the car parks of tourist sites, and leave nothing visible in the car.
What to see and do in Uzès and the Pont du Gard
- Duché d'Uzès
- Tour Fenestrelle
- Place aux Herbes and the Saturday market
- Pont du Gard
- Eure Valley
- Haribo Sweet Museum
- Lussan
- Concluses de Lussan
Duché d'Uzès
The Duché has dominated the town centre since the Middle Ages: the lords and then viscounts of Uzès held their fief here before Charles IX raised the viscountcy to a duchy by letters patent in May 1565, then to a duchy-peerage in February 1572. The Crussol d'Uzès family, still the owners, make it the oldest surviving duchy-peerage of the kingdom, and the 17th duke, Jacques de Crussol d'Uzès, holds the title today. The ensemble gathers buildings from several periods around a courtyard: the keep of the Tour Bermonde, wings from different eras including a Renaissance façade, and outbuildings. The guided tour, about 1h15, first goes down into the vaulted cellars, passes through the furnished apartments where family portraits sit alongside mementoes of the duchesses, then climbs the tower stairs to the terrace. From there, the town spreads out in round-tiled roofs around the Tour Fenestrelle, and the garrigue stretches as far as the eye can see. Tickets are sold on site, and you need to be ready for steps: there is no lift to the upper floors.
Tour Fenestrelle
The Tour Fenestrelle is the bell tower of Uzès's former Romanesque cathedral, built from 1090 on the site of a Roman temple. Damaged during the Albigensian Crusade and then destroyed at the start of the Wars of Religion, the building was razed in 1621, and only the tower remained standing, shorn of two storeys. Cylindrical and 42 metres high, it owes its name to the many paired windows that punctuate each of its levels, a design very rare in France that recalls Italian campaniles. Saint-Théodorit Cathedral, rebuilt from 1642 to 1663 in the Counter-Reformation style, leans against it; the neo-Romanesque façade was added in 1873. Inside, the rib vaults rise to 18 metres, the galleries with wrought-iron balconies were added after 1685 for the new converts, and the organ with its grey and gold painted shutters is one of the few furnishings to have survived the Revolution. Listed as a historic monument as early as 1862, the tower is best seen from the promenade that runs along the edge of the plateau.
Place aux Herbes and the Saturday market
The heart of the old town, Place aux Herbes is an irregular rectangle lined with arcaded houses and planted with plane trees, with a large ornate cast-iron fountain from the mid-19th century in the centre. Trade in local produce has always had its place here, and the tradition continues every Saturday morning with a market that spills into the neighbouring streets as far as Place Albert-Ier and its own fountains. You'll find producers from the garrigue and the nearby Cévennes: pélardons, Picholine olives, oil from the Gard's mills, lavender and rosemary honey, asparagus in spring, melons and figs in summer, and the region's black truffles in winter. Second-hand dealers and craftspeople round out the stalls. The rest of the week, the square returns to its calm and its café terraces, and you can take in the 17th- and 18th-century façades, the studded doors and the covered passages leading into the lanes of the old town.
Pont du Gard
The Pont du Gard is the monumental section of an aqueduct over 50 kilometres long that carried water from the Fontaine d'Eure, at the foot of Uzès, to Nemausus, Roman Nîmes. The total drop was only 12.6 metres, an average of 24.8 centimetres per kilometre, and the flow is estimated at 40,000 cubic metres a day. Probably built between AD 40 and 50, the bridge crosses the Gardon on three tiers: 6 arches at the bottom over 142 metres, 11 in the middle over 242 metres, and 35 small arches at the top over 275 metres, for a height of 48.77 metres. The shelly limestone blocks, quarried at the Estel quarry 700 metres downstream, were laid almost entirely dry, without mortar, held together by oak tenons. In the Middle Ages, piers were notched to let a road through, then in 1743-1747 the engineer Henri Pitot added the road bridge you cross today alongside it. Listed as a historic monument as early as 1840 and a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1985, it withstood the floods of 1988 and September 2002, when the water rose three quarters of the way up the lower arches. The pedestrian site has a museum, a film and a children's trail.
Eure Valley
Below the ramparts, the Uzès plateau drops into the Alzon valley, and this is where the Fontaine d'Eure gushes out: around ten perennial springs that act as the outlet of an aquifer held in the neighbouring limestone. The average flow reaches 380 litres per second but varies enormously, from 150 to 1,300 litres depending on the season. In the 1st century, Roman engineers built the intake of the Nîmes aqueduct here, which stopped working in the 6th century; the remains of the structure within the commune have been protected as historic monuments since 1997, and a section of ancient conduit was found as recently as 2023 upstream of the springs. Today, two boreholes drilled in 1990 and 1992 supply the town's drinking water. The waymarked path starts from the tourist office, passes through the Duché park, drops down into the greenery and runs alongside the pools and low walls, in a surprising setting of riverside woodland a stone's throw from the garrigue. The walk is short and shaded, and lets you see on the ground where the water of the Pont du Gard set out from.
Lussan
Lussan sits atop a rocky outcrop on the northern edge of the Pays d'Uzès, facing Mont Bouquet and the first ridges of the Cévennes. In the 12th century, the local lords, allied to the Barjac family and vassals of the Count of Toulouse, built a first castle here, of which sections of wall remain at the place called le Verger; at the end of the 15th century they built a second on the plateau, which now houses the town hall and has been a listed historic monument since 1985, then a third, the more comfortable Château de Fan, beside the spring of the same name. The latter remained in André Gide's family until 1920. The village, which had 1,321 inhabitants in 1851 and has 545 today, has been carefully restored: cobbled lanes, arched doorways and stone houses huddled on the rock. It has been listed among Les Plus Beaux Villages de France since 2016. To the north, the Concluses gorges, the Pierre Plantée menhir and a Protestant church listed in 2015 complete the visit.
How many days, and which itinerary?
Three days are enough for Uzès, the Pont du Gard and Lussan. Five days let you settle into the rhythm of the area, add the Gardon valley on foot or by canoe, and push on to Nîmes or Avignon for a day.
🗺️ Day-by-day itinerary · 📓 Free printable Uzès and the Pont du Gard guide (PDF) · 🌍 All of France
weekend (2 days)
Day 1: arrive in Uzès on Saturday morning for the market on Place aux Herbes, lunch on a terrace, the Duché in the afternoon and the Tour Fenestrelle at sunset. Day 2: the Pont du Gard as soon as it opens, a walk on both banks and a swim in the Gardon in season, back to Uzès via the Eure Valley in the late afternoon.
4-5 days
Day 1: Uzès, the Duché, the cathedral and the promenade. Day 2: the Saturday market, then the Eure Valley on foot to the Fontaine d'Eure. Day 3: the Pont du Gard in the morning, museum and discovery areas, canoeing on the Gardon in the afternoon. Day 4: Lussan and the Concluses, picnic near the Pierre Plantée menhir. Day 5: Saint-Quentin-la-Poterie and its workshops, the Haribo museum with the children.
one week
Days 1 to 5: as above. Day 6: a day in Nîmes, with the arena, the Maison Carrée and the Jardins de la Fontaine, where the aqueduct water arrived at the castellum that can still be seen. Day 7: Avignon and its Palais des Papes, or the villages of the Gard Rhodanien before heading home via Avignon TGV.
Getting there and getting around
The TGV links Paris-Gare de Lyon to Avignon TGV in about 2h40 and to Nîmes in 2h50; from there it's another 40 minutes by car to Uzès. Coach line 115 links Avignon and Alès, stopping at the Pont du Gard, and line 121 runs from Nîmes to the site: handy for a day trip, not enough for exploring further afield.
Once there, a car is the simplest option, as the villages and sites are scattered across the garrigue and buses are rare at weekends. Uzès is best explored on foot: park in the car parks on the edge of the centre.
An e-bike works well in spring and autumn on the small roads between Uzès, Saint-Quentin-la-Poterie and the Pont du Gard; in July and August, ride early, as the heat comes down hard from 11am.
Where to stay in Uzès and the Pont du Gard?
Budget: simple hotels in the centre of Uzès and on the edge of town, as well as small hotels in Collias and Remoulins near the Pont du Gard, cost between €70 and 100 a night outside July and August. The campsites on the banks of the Gardon, at Collias or Vers-Pont-du-Gard, are the cheapest option in summer.
Comfort: charming hotels set in old Uzès houses, often with a small pool, charge €120 to 180 a night. B&Bs in the old farmhouses (mas) of the garrigue, around Arpaillargues or Saint-Quentin-la-Poterie, are in the same price range with more space.
Our pick: stay in a restored château or hôtel particulier, in the heart of Uzès or in a nearby village, to dine in a shaded courtyard and walk to the market on Saturday morning. In summer, book several months ahead: the town has few rooms and many loyal regulars.
Our places to stay, stop by stop, at three budgets →
What to eat in Uzès and the Pont du Gard?
The Saturday market is Uzès's best table: pélardons, goat's cheeses from the Cévennes, Picholine olives, tapenade, mountain charcuterie, melons and strawberries depending on the season. From November to March, black truffles are sold at the market and cooked in brouillade, soft scrambled eggs, in the town's restaurants.
In restaurants, the cooking looks towards Provence and Languedoc: brandade de morue, Camargue bull in gardiane stew, stuffed vegetables, garrigue lamb. The tables on Place aux Herbes and in the lanes offer lunch menus between €20 and 35.
For wine, the Pays d'Uzès has its own appellation, Duché d'Uzès, garrigue reds and whites to taste with the winegrowers in the villages. Costières de Nîmes and the Gard's Côtes du Rhône are not far away. Finish with an artisan ice cream under the arcades, or a bag of sweets bought on the way out of the Haribo museum for the children.
Entry requirements
Schengen area: an ID card or passport for EU citizens, 90 days visa-free for UK, US, Canadian and Australian passports.
Rules change: check your own government's travel advice before you go.
Frequently asked questions about Uzès and the Pont du Gard
Which day should you visit Uzès?
Saturday, for the market on Place aux Herbes, the liveliest of the week, as long as you arrive before 9:30am. For a quieter town and free parking spaces, choose a weekday outside July and August.
Can you swim at the Pont du Gard?
Yes, in summer, from the pebble beaches upstream and downstream of the bridge, at your own risk. The level and current of the Gardon vary with the rain; stay out of the water after a storm.
How much does it cost to visit the Pont du Gard?
Access to the site is free on foot or by bike. Parking costs €9 per car for the day, and the discovery areas (museum, film, children's trail) €8 per adult.
Do you need a car to explore the Pays d'Uzès?
It is strongly recommended. Coaches link Nîmes and Avignon to the Pont du Gard, but Lussan, the Concluses and the garrigue villages are not conveniently served.
How many days should you spend in Uzès?
Three days for the town, the Pont du Gard and Lussan; five to add canoeing on the Gardon, Saint-Quentin-la-Poterie and a day in Nîmes or Avignon.
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