In 1869, the octogenarian Guizot wrote to a friend: «For myself, I only like the sun and the heat. Physically, I have remained a southerner all my life».»

However, he only spent the first twelve years of his life in the Midi, in Nîmes, where he was born on 4 October 1787 and where his parents lived, 2 rue Caguensol. For centuries, his family has come from Saint-Geniès de Malgloirès on his father's side and Pont-de-Montvert on his mother's, two villages north of Nîmes.

Young François played, with his brother Jean-Jacques, in the garden of the mazet owned by his grandfather Bonicel at the foot of the Tour Magne, and it was from there that, after the fall of Robespierre, he saw the Jacobins being beaten, the terrorists responsible for the assassination of his father André, who was guillotined in April 1794. In that respect, Nîmes did not leave him with fond memories.

Yet his attachment to his «native land» never wavered. As well as his taste for aubergines, figs and walnuts, he maintained a solid network of personal and political friendships throughout his life in the Gard: the members of parliament Daunant and Chabaud-Latour, long-time friends of the Guizot family, the mayor of Nîmes Girard and many others.

In 1849, it was in Nîmes that he would have liked to relaunch his political career. He tried to get his son Guillaume's career off the ground there, and in 1860 he married Gabrielle Verdier de Flaux, a daughter of a very good local family, in the Nîmes temple. It was on this occasion that Guizot made his last visit to his home town, speaking before the Académie du Gard, of which he had been a member for 53 years. In 1855, a street named after him was opened near his father's house, and it still exists today. He declared himself «sensitive to this mark of good memory of my homeland».»