Carthage, the Antonine Roman Baths and Bardo Museum.

On the second day of our holiday in Tunisia we went on an organised trip to Carthage, we knew about this place before we travelled and had looked for a hotel nearby so we could visit. The journey still took a couple of hours to get there and the trip took in visits to the Bardot museum and a Berber village.  The journey enabled us to see a lot more of Tunisia and the many olive trees that grow there. Many of the olive orchards had boundaries of cactus plants which I thought was quite clever and a very effective way of keeping people out, with the large spiky plants creating a very intimidating barrier. 

For some reason both me and David thought the ruins at Carthage were on a bigger scale, more the size of a small settlement whereas it is just the ruins of a bath house that the Romans had built. I must admit it is a very big bath house but still it is just one building. There is a model there that shows what it would have looked like in its heyday and illustrates the amazing skill, effort and technology that the Romans had. 

It was interesting to see but in a way ,with its large columns it reminded me more of a factory from the Industrial Age, with the remaining columns reminding me of chimneys soaring into the sky. 

There were a couple of slabs of masonry showing writing and these large stone balls which were used in large catapults by the Romans to attack the enemy.  The balls were so big it would have taken at least two if not more men to put them in place. 

On the trip we went to a couple of museums that had mosaics in them. The biggest museum and the one that has the most mosaics in Tunisia is the Bardo Museum. The mosaics are very interesting and show a lot of detail, a lot of hard intricate work has gone into them. They vary greatly in size too, some are the size of small rugs and were often fitted just like that on the floor while others were huge taking up a vast floor space. 

As you can see some of their statues were really big, once again David comes in handy to show the scale. Apparently in Roman times the bodies of statues in their togas and cloaks were often made without their heads and you could just slot on the head you wanted. Very clever, I think and that way you could reuse a statue as people fell in and out of power. 

Some mosaics showed a story or scene depicting everyday life often related to the area or owner of the building and their interests and hobbies. 

Carthage was founded by the Phoenicians in 814 BC and was once home to Hannibal but it really raised in status during the reign of the Roman Empire.