"El Jem - Africa's Colosseum" El Jem by Willettsworld

The little market town of El Jem lies in the Tunisian Sahel between Sousse in the north and Sfax in the south. The town's great landmark is the amphitheatre, the largest Roman building in North Africa, whose walls rise high above the surrounding houses. From whatever direction you approach El Jem, it is the first thing that catches your eye. There is also a superb museum to the south-west of the amphitheatre that exhibits fine mosaics and features excavations and a reconstruction of Roman villas in its grounds.

There was a Punic settlement here in the third century BC, but it became a place of some importance only when Caesar, after landing at Ruspina (now Monastir), founded the Roman town of Thysdrus on the site in 46 BC. The town lay on an important road and in the centre of a large olive-growing region; and since olive oil was in great demand in Rome at that period - both as a foodstuff and as fuel and in the manufacture of soap and cooking essences - the town rapidly prospered. The amphitheatre, begun at the end of the second century AD, and now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, was designed to be a symbol of this prosperity; but while it was still under construction the decline of Thysdrus set in. The occasion for this decline was the reintroduction of the tax on olive oil in AD 238, sparking off a rebellion which spread throughout Tunisia. The town declined and Berber's used the amphitheatre as a fortress in the late 7th century.