Qualla: Bulla Regia https://qualla.com/bulla-regia en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:30 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/s/n/q/p/bulla-regia-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Bulla Regia https://qualla.com/bulla-regia Bulla Regia: Introduction https://qualla.com/bulla-regia/ Photo credit Wael Ghabara, CC BY-SA 4.0. Water sprinkled on mosaic floors evaporated in the darkness and cooled the rooms below. Two thousand years ago, the residents of Bulla Regia in northern Tunisia devised what might be the ancient world's most elegant answer to brutal summers: they built their homes underground. Each house had a conventional ground floor open to winter sunlight, but beneath it lay a subterranean level arranged around a two-story atrium, where the heat of the North African sun could not reach. The mosaics they laid in those underground rooms are among the finest ever produced in Roman Africa.

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Image: Wael Ghabara | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Fri, 13 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/n/q/p/bulla-regia-wp/snqp-bulla-regia-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Bulla Regia: Temple of Baal, Capital of Kings https://qualla.com/bulla-regia/ Photo credit Gigi sorrentino, CC BY-SA 4.0. The name Bulla Regia means "Royal Bulla" in Latin, referring to its status as a Numidian capital. But the city's roots reach deeper. Its Punic currency renders the name as characters suggesting "House of Baal" or "Temple of Baal," connecting it to the Phoenician trading networks ...

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Image: Gigi sorrentino | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Fri, 13 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/n/q/p/bulla-regia-wp/snqp-bulla-regia-temple-of-baal-capital-of-kings.mp3 0:06 2 full Bulla Regia: Underground Architecture of Survival https://qualla.com/bulla-regia/ Photo credit Pradigue, CC BY-SA 3.0. The subterranean houses that make Bulla Regia unique were a Hadrianic-era innovation, dating to the 2nd century AD when Emperor Hadrian elevated the city to colony status. Open-bottomed terracotta bottle-shapes were built into the vaulting to reduce weight. The underground levels...

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Image: Pradigue | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Fri, 13 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/n/q/p/bulla-regia-wp/snqp-bulla-regia-underground-architecture-of-survival.mp3 0:06 3 full Bulla Regia: The Slave Collar in Apollo's Temple https://qualla.com/bulla-regia/ Photo credit Pradigue, CC BY-SA 3.0. Not everything preserved at Bulla Regia speaks to beauty. In the courtyard of the Temple of Apollo, archaeologists found the remains of a woman wearing a lead slave collar. The tag instructed anyone who found her to detain her, stating that she had fled from Bulla Regia. It inclu...

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Image: Pradigue | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Fri, 13 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/n/q/p/bulla-regia-wp/snqp-bulla-regia-the-slave-collar-in-apollos-temple.mp3 0:06 4 full Bulla Regia: Buried, Forgotten, Rediscovered https://qualla.com/bulla-regia/ Photo credit Pradigue, CC BY-SA 3.0. Under Byzantine rule, Bulla Regia's wealthy families expanded their houses at the expense of public space -- the House of the Fisherman consumed two separate city blocks, turning a thoroughfare into a dead end. Then an earthquake collapsed the ground-level stories into the subter...

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Image: Pradigue | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Fri, 13 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/n/q/p/bulla-regia-wp/snqp-bulla-regia-buried-forgotten-rediscovered.mp3 0:06 5 full