Hannibal & Carthage

Alas, the youth of today are no longer required to plough through the writings of Livy or Polybius and their prodigious accounts of Hannibal and the Punic Wars, his campaigns against the Romans and the crossing of the Alps with elephants. Therefore few will realise that Hannibal came from Tunisia and that Carthage, now a suburb of Tunis, was one of the great cities of antiquity, with a flourishing commercial and war-faring tradition, which thrived from the 8th century BC until the Romans finally razed it in 146BC.

Julius Caesar founded a provincial capital here and during the 3rd and 4th centuries its university was the centre for the founders of early Christian thought. Then the city suffered at the hands of the Vandals who conquered the region at the end of the 5th century. They lived up to their name, vandalising many of the Roman statues by chipping off their proud noses.
Those who choose to venture behind the glorious beaches and hotel complexes will discover a land rich in the remains of other Roman cities such as elegant Dougga and Sufetula, Islamic architecture, desert oases and Berber villages.