Nizas is unique to its residents, no doubt, but to the North American visitor, via the UAE, it has a certain charming sameness as do hundreds (thousands?) of other little towns in the Languedoc.

Let’s take a walk around, starting at the village church.

The church was built of stone more than two centuries ago, and it seems bigger than the current town requires — and must have been ambitiously large when it was completed, in 1708.

Apparently, it is named after St. Peter, but you have to infer that from the explanatory plaque on the south wall. It sits on the former site of a chapel dedicated to the saints Perpetua and Felicity, and my reading of the plaque indicates relics pertaining to the former may be inside. Or maybe not.

The French are no longer devout, and the church is locked up at all times — aside from the one mass held there per month, if I parsed the French flyer correctly. It has some stained glass on the east and west sides of the church, and members of the Nizas family, Spanish immigrants a millennium ago for whom the town was named, are buried in the chancel.

The biggest impact the church has in the daily lives of those around us is that the bell in the tower (added a century after the church was built) rings nine times at 7 a.m., noon and 7 p.m. Two of those three eruptions are helpful.

The centre ville is outside the church door, and in the middle of it stands a fountains with a statue of Artemis atop it. The statue has a star on the Greek god’s head, and apparently it is supposed to represent the light of learning.

Artemis is looking west, in the direction of the village’s one cafe, now more of a bar a vin (wine bar) than eatery. Apparently, the cafe burned down, and when it was renovated it emerged as a wine bar. It seems a busy place, with several locals in it at any given time; the town drunk, a grizzled little man of perhaps 45, usually is there.

Exit the town to the north, and you leave through narrow lanes between stone houses of indeterminate age, but certainly more than a century old. They may stand forever, but most are no longer comfortable, with little natural light, and lots of stairs and low ceilings and jury-rigged utilities. The French were happy to live that way for centuries; they must have represented a big step up from huts and shacks of the medieval period, and the lower floor generally was given over to the family business.

Turning left on the “main” road (sometimes called the Avenue de Nizas), we soon see the city’s one bus stop and then, just before leaving the city limits, the ‘burbs.

Like many small French villages, the old stone homes have been abandoned by many of the younger citizens in favor of low-slung, California-style tract homes, perhaps 1,200 feet square. They get more light, they have yards front and back … they just seem more cheerful (if, somehow, out of place). If I lived in Nizas, I would try to be in one of these places — which still are within walking distance of the city center.

We do an about-face at the western limits of the city, and head east (with more “suburbs” to our left) and pass the city’s recreational area, which consists mostly of an all-weather tennis court.

Past a few more buildings, old and tattered, and one of the city’s three wineries, and to a roundabout on the city’s northeast side. One road leads out of town (and past the town’s little cemetery, which appears to be no more than 50-60 years old), and the other back into Nizas.

This must have been the historic entrance of the town, because it is here that the monument to the dead of World War I is the focal point of a little park.

On our left is a road branching up an incline — and towards the town’s one soccer field (in a sad state of disrepair, though two goals, with nets, are there), and beyond that to more vineyards.

(To reach any limit of the town is to be confronted by the soothing view of green hills, covered by vines and interrupted only by narrow roads and, perhaps, a hilltop too rocky for cultivation. It makes for pleasant scenery, especially to those of us who spend most of the year in a desert.)

On the left is the town school; Nizas apparently has just enough children to warrant its own school, at least for little kids. The building has the Republican slogan (fraternite, liberte, egalite) above the doors. Parents gather by the dozens around 5 p.m. to pick up the tots.

The road is narrow, of course, but these stone buildings appear to be inhabited. A man is hanging laundry to dry on his balcony. Someone is watching TV.

On the right is the town’s little grocery/liquor store, and it is opened mornings and evenings Tuesday through Saturday, and for four hours on Sunday morning. It was at the grocery, on our first night here, that the proprietor was suffering  the ramblings of the town drunk, as we entered. The drunk asked us if we were British (the typical English-speakers in these parts), and when we said “American” he smiled and shouted “o-ba-MA!” Behind him, the grocer winked and made the universal sign (thumb tipped toward his mouth, pinky in the air) that indicates “drunk”.

To our left is the road leading south, to the “big” city of Pezenas (pop. 8,500), and just beyond it are the walls of the old chateau, built by the Nizas family, and in a few more feet we are back into the town square.

Nizas is a pleasant place, well-placed on a rise (as are all towns locally, to escape flooding), quiet, orderly but still inhabited, still able to feed and entertain itself and, once a month, attend to matters religious.