Pont du Gard et la légende du lièvre du diable

Vers-Pont-du-Gard

Three tiers of golden arches span the Gardon river forty-nine metres up: the Pont du Gard, the tallest aqueduct bridge of the Roman world and the only surviving three-tier bridge from antiquity, carried water in the 1st century from the Eure spring near Uzès to the fountains and baths of Nîmes, along a fifty-kilometre aqueduct. Faced with such a feat, local people long preferred a more dizzying explanation to the ingenuity of Roman engineers. A Provençal tradition, recorded by Frédéric Mistral in his Provençal almanac (1876), tells of a master mason whose work had just collapsed for the third time under the Gardon's furies, and who called on the devil for help. A pact was struck: the bridge would be built in a single night, proof against all floods, in exchange for the soul of the first creature to cross it. Come morning, on his wife's advice, the mason released a young hare — just flushed by the dogs — onto the deck. Furious at being paid with a mere hare's soul, the devil seized the animal and dashed it against the stone before plunging into the abyss to the sound of bells. Still shown today, set into one of the arches, is the shape of the petrified 'hare' — in reality a Roman carving meant to ward off ill fortune, saluted by generations of stonemasons' guilds ever since. Listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1985, the bridge can be approached at water level or from the top of the scrubland above.

Getting there : Developed paid site (car parks on both banks, museum), open year-round; the bridge itself is crossed on foot. Coordinates given for the bridge itself.

Opening times and access details are given as a guide only: check before you set out.

Ambient sound