The entrance of the gladiators at the Fréjus Roman amphitheatre. The arena is still in use for contemporary events although Fréjus town has famously outlawed fiestas featuring live bullfights since 2010. The Roman remains have been cloaked in modern seating and fittings and there is a memorial garden outside to the disaster in 1959 when a dam burst with a flood wave which resulted in the loss of 400 lives.
The twentieth century historian of the region Alphonse Donnadieu proclaimed Fréjus the “Pompeii of France” but was rather overstating the case, Fréjus had a fine Roman water system and aqueducts and a Roman theatre but few of the Roman sites have escaped the rapid expansion and development of the town in the past forty years.