Qualla: Thuburbo Majus

Thuburbo Majus: Introduction

Fri, 13 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit GIRAUD Patrick, CC BY-SA 2.5. Sixty kilometers southwest of Carthage, in open countryside with no modern town in sight, the columns and foundations of a Roman city emerge from the Tunisian earth. Thuburbo Majus was not the grandest city in Roman Africa, nor the most famous. But its isolation is precisely what preserved it. No medieval city was built on top of its ruins. No highway cut through its forum. The city that Augustus founded for his retired legionnaires in 27 BC simply emptied and waited.

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Image: GIRAUD Patrick | CC BY-SA 2.5

Thuburbo Majus: A Soldier's Reward

Fri, 13 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ghabara, CC BY-SA 4.0. Before Rome, there was Carthage. Thuburbo began as a Punic settlement along a major thoroughfare connecting Carthage to the Sahara, a route that passed through Sbiba, Sufes, and Sufetula. When Augustus resettled military veterans across North Africa after the civil wars, Thuburbo...

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Image: Ghabara | CC BY-SA 4.0

Thuburbo Majus: Stone and Mosaic

Fri, 13 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kalechnizar, CC BY-SA 3.0. Most of the visible ruins date from the great building period of 150 to 200 AD. A Capitolium -- the temple to Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva that marked a city's importance -- arrived in 168 AD. Excavations beginning in 1916 uncovered a tetrastyle temple decorated with statues of Apo...

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Image: Kalechnizar | CC BY-SA 3.0

Thuburbo Majus: Saints and Heretics

Fri, 13 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, CC BY 3.0. Thuburbo's importance extended beyond commerce and architecture. The early third-century Christian martyr Perpetua was born here -- a young noblewoman whose account of her imprisonment and death in the Carthage arena became one of the earliest and most vivid pieces of Christian l...

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Image: Unknown author | CC BY 3.0

Thuburbo Majus: What the Countryside Kept

Fri, 13 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ghabara, CC BY-SA 4.0. Today Thuburbo Majus has no fully restored buildings, but the remains are substantial and evocative. The forum, amphitheater, temples, baths, and private houses are all legible in the landscape. Parts of the old Roman road that connected Carthage to the Sahara still survive. Walk...

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Image: Ghabara | CC BY-SA 4.0