Time permitting, we follow the Sidi-Daoud road to the N.W. from the castle-hill, cross the Goletta and La Marsa highroad, and reach (¼ hr.) the Roman Amphitheatre, which has been broken up only since the 16th cent., and which Edrisi, the geographer (1154), has described as one of almost matchless splendour. All that is left of it consists of a few remains of substructures deeply imbedded in rubbish, several underground passages, and in the centre of the arena (where a chapel with a cross recalls the martyrs Perpetua and Felicitas, p. [350]) three underground chambers, probably for the machinery used in theatrical performances.
To the S., not far from Douar ech-Chott (p. [344]), are a few vestiges of the Roman Circus. It measured 770 by 110 yds.; the Spina, or partition round which the racing chariots passed, was 380 yds. long.
Scarcely a hundred paces to the N.W. of the amphitheatre, near a farm-building, is a Burial Ground of the Officiales (1st–2nd cent.), the imperial freedmen and slaves employed in the proconsul’s office (tabularium).—Beyond the amphitheatre the road passes a second Burial Ground of the same kind on the right and the foundations of the Villa of Scorpianus (identified by the inscription ‘Scorpianus in adamatu’) on the left.
To the W. of the highroad, 12 min. from the castle-hill, lies the dirty village of La Malga (82 ft.), which swarms with begging children. On the N.E. side of the village are scanty ruins of Roman Thermae. The Cisterns in the middle of the village, 15 (originally 24) barrel-vaults now in a very ruinous condition and partly used by the natives as dwellings or stables, once formed the chief reservoir fed by the Roman Aqueduct (pp. [329], 353, 358), begun under Hadrian in 117, but not completed till 163. The whole city was supplied thence by means of leaden pipes.
A Roman Road leads almost in a straight line from La Malga, to the N.E., close past Damous el-Karita (p. [349]) and past the Basilica Maiorum (p. [350]), to the Arrêt de la Briqueterie (p. [344]).
From La Malga we follow the road to the S.E., past the Croix de St. Cyprien, a memorial of the famous bishop (pp. [345], 346), along the course of the old ‘Conduit Souterrain’, to the Abbey Hill (171 ft.), often groundlessly called Colline de Junon, rising to the N.E. of the castle-hill. Here are situated the Monastère du Carmel, a Carmelite nunnery, and the Petit Séminaire, the original mission-house of the White Fathers, now an orphanage presided over by the Sœurs Missionnaires d’Afrique, a sisterhood also instituted by Card. Lavigerie. On the roadside, between these buildings, remains of Roman Houses and Cisterns have been excavated.
On the slope of the Odeon Plateau (181 ft.), the N.E. continuation of the abbey-hill, near the bridge of the electric tramway, and 3 min. to the left of the upper Carthage and Sidi Bou-Saïd road (p. [350]), are relics of the Roman Theatre, including several rows of the seats of the cavea (p. [293]) and parts of the stage-building. After the partial restoration of the theatre a grand performance took place here in 1908 and similar representations will be occasionally repeated.—A few paces to the S.W. of the stage we come to the foundations of a small Roman Temple Circulaire. To the N.E. of the theatre, on the S.E. slope of the plateau, are the more considerable remains of Roman Houses, but these have recently been threatened with demolition.
On the plateau itself, about a hundred paces above the theatre, in the midst of a Punic Necropolis (3rd cent. B.C.), are relics of pavement and several underground passages marking the site of the Odeon, a roofed theatre (theatrum tectum) for concerts, built under the proconsul Vigellius Saturninus (about 212 A.D.). Both the theatre and the odeon are said to have been destroyed by the Vandals in 439.
Outside the old town-wall (p. [345]), about 135 yds. to the N. of the Odeon, and 3 min. to the W. of station Ste. Monique (p. [344]), lies an extensive early-Christian cemetery, in the centre of which lie the ruins of Damous el-Karita (domus caritatis?), a great basilica. This church, 71 by 49 yds., was built at different periods. The oldest basilica with its ten aisles (4th cent.) was orientated to the S.E., and the second, with eight aisles, probably of the Vandal period, was turned towards the S.W. A third building, again with ten aisles, evidenced by its reduced size the decline of Carthage in the Byzantine period, as it consisted only of the old transept converted into a nave and of the four N.W. aisles of the second basilica. Within the oldest nave, in the axis of the first choir-recess, a new apse was erected. The ⟙-shaped building thus resulting, with its very short and many-aisled body, seems to have been the model on which Hassan ibn en-Nôman built the Kairwan mosque, as well as the source of much of its material (comp. pp. [374], 376).
Adjoining the basilica on the N.E. is a vast semicircular Atrium (see p. [316]), belonging to one of the two earlier churches, with remains of the fountain of purification and of a trefoil-shaped memorial-chapel (comp. p. [317]) built into the colonnade. On the S.W. side of the basilica lie the foundations of a Baptistery with an octagonal font.