Tunisia

I had a bout of insomnia the night before last, so my post on Ostia was a wee bit long. OK, way too long. I’ll do better with this post on our port stop in Tunis, Tunisia. I title this post Tunisia rather than its capital city of Tunis as we opted for an excursion that was on the outskirts of the town. I made a last minute change from a highlights tour of Tunis to a visit to the ruins of Carthage and to a Moorish village, Sidi Bou Said. The change also meant a change from a morning tour to an afternoon one. This was a mixed blessing. Well, more a mixed blasting—of cold, wind and rain.

There were to be two parts to our excursion. The first was a visit to several archeological sites from the Carthaginian and Roman eras. (Interesting that our Muslim guide used B.C. and A.D. and “before Christ” and “after Christ”, but not BCE and CE when quoting dates.)

First, a history reminder, at least for myself. While the Berbers were the first peoples of Tunisia (and are still here, if inland), our history lesson starts with the colonization of this area by the Phoenicians in 814 B.C. These became the Carthaginians, a major Western Mediterranean power—until the Punic Wars with the Romans, who destroyed Carthage in 146 B.C. Roman Carthage itself fell to the Vandals nearly six hundred years later but was reconquered by the Byzantine Romans a hundred years after that. The Arabs came and conquered Carthage in 697-698 A.D. The Arabs did their best to destroy anything Roman. The Ottomans took Tunisia in 1574 and the French made it a colony in 1881. Tunisia gained independence in 1956. I’ll leave out the parts about Barbary pirates and the like. Did you follow all this?

All this is to say that, unlike in Europe where Rome’s historical presence is well highlighted, only recently have the North African countries attempted any serious excavation and advertising of their pre-Arab history. And there are only traces of the once important Carthaginian empire. (Having said this, Tunisia is well ahead of civil war ridden Libya and autocratic Algeria in researching and beginning to preserve what’s left of its ancient past.)

Our first stop was to visit the ruins of a Roman amphitheater that once held 42,000 spectators. Only the foundation remains, all the marble and higher story bricks being reused elsewhere.

This lagoon was once the man-made harbor for the Punic Carthaginians. Bottom left: Hannibal has not been forgotten. Bottom right: Villas now line the one-time harbor.

Our most impressive visit was to the Antoninian Baths Park. Left: Under this Roman road is the final leg of an aqueduct that started 80 miles to the south, one of Rome’s longest, leading to the baths. Right: An access cover to the aqueduct.

Left: These small boxes once contained the bodies of Phoenician babies, recovered from the necropolis (right). The Punic necropolis is at the lowest level of the site. Above it is the Roman level, and above it the Byzantine level. Archeologists face the difficult decision as to how deep to excavate, hence destroying artifacts in the levels above. Recent rains have collapsed one section of this dig, halting work.

Fake news is not new. Roman propaganda claimed that the Punics sacrificed infants to their primitive gods. This was most likely not true. The small crypts merely contained the corpses of infants who died near birth, a sad but frequent occurrence for most of human history.

Remains of the once massive Antoninian Baths. Much of this was covered over the centuries by sands deposited from flooding from the nearby sea.

It was while approaching the ruins of the baths that the skies unloaded on us. The tour was brought to a wet and hasty end. Despite this, we loaded on our bus and headed to the Moorish village of Sidi Bou Said. This was to be a visit to an attractive community distinguished by its blue and white architecture. But the weather did not relent. The rain was accompanied by a surprisingly cold wind. The group cut the tour a bit short and we headed back to the ship.

I braved a few shots in the village, including the local mosque, from which the call to prayer emanated even during the downpour.

Our guide called these jalousie windows, from which female house residents could look out on the street while remaining unobserved. In my youth, our porch had what was called jalousie windows (with glass slats in our case). If the name sounds like ‘jealousy’, well, that is the origin of the word.

I finish with a picture of the relatively new Carthage mosque and the former St. Louis Cathedral, ceded to the Tunisian state in 1964 and now under renovation as a museum. There are few Christians in the country—except as tourists, of course.


I was going to mention in one of the posts that, after leaving Barcelona, the Viking Vesta has been the only cruise ship we’ve seen. I’m figuring out why. After missing Marseilles due to bad sea conditions, our weather has improved—until today. Unfortunately, the captain has announced we would not be sailing to either Algiers or Casablanca. Missing Algiers is for me a major disappointment. Visiting Algeria is not common. Sardinia and Mallorca are being looked at as alternatives. We’ll let you know the next post.