Qualla: Carthage Amphitheatre

Carthage Amphitheatre: Introduction

Fri, 13 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In the 11th century, the Arab geographer Al-Bakri stood before the Carthage Amphitheatre and marveled. He described a building of concentric arches supported by columns, its walls decorated with carved animals and figures symbolizing the winds -- the East smiling, the West frowning. Two centuries later, Al Idrissi counted approximately fifty arches and praised the "infinite skill" of the relief carvings: humans, animals, ships, all executed with artistry that still astonished after a thousand years of neglect. Today, nothing remains of what they saw. Looters have taken everything above ground level, leaving only the sunken oval of the arena in a grove of pine trees.

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Carthage Amphitheatre: Built on Flat Ground

Fri, 13 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The amphitheatre was constructed at the end of the 1st century or the beginning of the 2nd century AD, to the west of the hill of Byrsa, in the Roman city that Julius Caesar had ordered rebuilt on the ashes of Punic Carthage. An inscription confirms it was in active use by 133-13...

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Carthage Amphitheatre: Saints and Spectacle

Fri, 13 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In 1887, a cross was erected in the center of the arena to commemorate the martyrdom of Saints Perpetua and Felicity, two early Christian women who tradition holds were executed in a Carthaginian amphitheatre on March 7, 203 AD. Whether this particular amphitheatre was the site o...

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Carthage Amphitheatre: A Millennium of Quarrying

Fri, 13 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The amphitheatre's destruction was not sudden but glacial -- a thousand-year process of stone removal that left the structure progressively more skeletal. After the Arab conquest of 698 brought Carthage's era as a major city to a close, the amphitheatre joined every other monumen...

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Carthage Amphitheatre: Echoes in Stone

Fri, 13 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

What makes the Carthage Amphitheatre haunting is not what remains but what was described before it vanished. Al-Bakri's account of wind figures -- East smiling, West frowning -- suggests decorative programs that rivaled anything in Rome or Pompeii. Al Idrissi's description of fif...

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