Antoninus Pius
Roman emperor from 138 to 161, Antoninus was born in 86 at Lanuvium, in Italy, but his father’s family, the Aurelii Fulvi, was established in Nemausus. His grandfather was consul in 85 and his father in 89. This link earned Nîmes the nickname "city of the Antonines". As you stroll between the Arènes and the Maison Carrée, you are walking through the city his ancestors came from.
Jean Nicot
Born in Nîmes in 1530, Jean Nicot studied there at the college and university of arts. French ambassador to Portugal from 1559 to 1561, he introduced tobacco to France and sent some to Catherine de’ Medici in 1560. The genus Nicotiana and nicotine are named after him. He also wrote the Thresor de la langue francoyse, a dictionary published in 1606, after his death in Paris in 1604.
François Guizot
Born in Nîmes on 4 October 1787 into a Protestant family, Guizot lost his father, executed during the Terror in 1794; the family then left for Geneva. Historian, minister and then head of government, he had the law of 28 June 1833 passed, requiring every municipality of more than 500 inhabitants to have a primary school. He died in 1874 in the Calvados.
Alphonse Daudet
Born in Nîmes on 13 May 1840, Alphonse Daudet spent his early years in the city: the Sabran house at 24 Grand-cours, then rue Graverol, route d’Avignon and rue Séguier, before the family left for Lyon. He wrote Le Petit Chose, Lettres de mon moulin and Tartarin de Tarascon. He died in Paris in 1897.
Bernard Lazare
Born in Nîmes on 14 June 1865, the journalist Bernard Lazare was one of the first Dreyfusards: in November 1896 he published the first pamphlet arguing for Dreyfus’s innocence. A street in Nîmes bears his name. His monument, erected in 1908 and destroyed in 1942, was rebuilt and unveiled in the Jardins de la Fontaine on 14 December 2025.
Jean Paulhan
Born on 2 December 1884 at 20 rue Jean-Reboul, in Nîmes, Jean Paulhan edited La Nouvelle Revue française from 1920 to 1968. He was elected to the Académie française in 1963 and died in 1968 in Neuilly-sur-Seine.
Bernadette Lafont
Born in Nîmes on 28 October 1938, Bernadette Lafont attended the girls’ lycée and learned dance at the city’s opera house. Her first film, Les Mistons, was shot in Nîmes in 1957. She went on to act in Le Beau Serge, La Maman et la Putain and L’Effrontée. Having returned to live in Nîmes, she died there on 25 July 2013.
- Antoninus Pius
- emperor from 138 to 161
- Jean Nicot
- born in Nîmes in 1530
- François Guizot
- born in Nîmes in 1787
- Alphonse Daudet
- born in Nîmes in 1840
- Bernard Lazare
- born in Nîmes in 1865
- Jean Paulhan
- born on rue Jean-Reboul in 1884
- Bernadette Lafont
- born in Nîmes in 1938