The Ancient City of Carthage

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Carthage was the capital city of the ancient Carthaginian civilization, located between the Tunisian capital city of Tunis and the Gulf of Tunis.

Among the ancient world’s largest and prosperous cities, Carthage’s strategical position gave access to extensive fertile and rich lands and major marine trade ways in Mediterranean sea.

In ancient times, this was a gigantic city. A population of 500 thousand to 750 thousand was considered massive, whereas now we would consider this pretty small. The city of Rome at its zenith (100 AD) was only about 1 million people.

Most cities in the West wouldn’t see a population higher than 500 thousand until after the Middle Ages (London during the time of the Black Death was only about 50 thousand people).

The city has two inner harbors were in the southeast.One harbor was for the commercial fleet, the other for the war fleet. It is assumed that various shipbuilding and ship repair works were carried out in the harbors, as well as loading and unloading of cargo. North and west of the harbors were located several industrial areas.

Carthage was separated into 4 equally sized residential zones. The city had defense towers, religious places, markets, theater, and a huge necropolis. Roughly in the middle of Carthage was located a high stronghold.

The Roman Republic destroyed Carthage city in the 3rd Punic War in 146 BC and then re-developed it as Roman Carthage, which became the most important city of the Roman Empire in the province of Africa. Later, the city was destroyed by Umayyad forces after the Battle of Carthage in 698 to prevent it from being reconquered by the Byzantine Empire. It remained occupied throughout the Muslim period and was used as a fort by the Muslims until the Hafsid period when it was taken by the Crusaders. The Hafsids decided to destroy its defenses so it couldn’t be used as a fortification by an opposed power again.

Nowadays, Carthage is a suburb of Tunis and has a population of just over 20 thousand.