Byrsa Hill, Carthage

Feel the ground under your shoes for a moment. It is pale, dusty, and slightly uneven. Here and there, fragments of stone and old mortar show through the soil. A breeze comes up from the sea, and it carries the smell of salt and pine. You are standing on Byrsa, the low hill at the heart of ancient Carthage. Below you, the Gulf of Tunis spreads out in shades of blue and silver.

This hill is the place where Carthage began, at least in the story the ancient world told about itself. Legend has it that a Phoenician princess named Elissa, better known as Dido, fled her home city of Tyre on the coast of modern Lebanon. She sailed west with a group of followers and landed on this shore. Ancient writers placed the founding in the late ninth century before Christ. Treat that date as tradition rather than proven fact.

The most famous part of the tale is clever. According to the legend, the local ruler agreed to sell Dido only as much land as one ox hide could cover. So Dido cut the hide into very thin strips. She laid them end to end in a long loop, and the loop enclosed this whole hilltop. In ancient Greek, the word for an ox hide sounds like Byrsa. Many scholars suspect the reverse, though: the name may come from a Semitic word for a fortress, and the Greeks built the story around it.

Whatever its origin, the hill became the citadel of a great sea power. Carthage grew into the leading city of the western Mediterranean. Its merchants traded metals, dyes, wine, and pottery across the sea. Its fleets competed with Greek cities, and later with Rome. Three long wars with Rome followed. These are called the Punic Wars. Punic is simply the Roman word for Phoenician, and you will hear it often here.

The second of those wars produced the name every visitor knows: Hannibal. He was the Carthaginian general who led an army, with elephants, across the Alps into Italy. He won battle after battle on Roman soil. In the end, though, Rome survived and Carthage lost. The third war was the last. In 146 BC, a Roman army under Scipio Aemilianus broke into the city after a long siege.

The fighting reached this hill. Ancient accounts describe street-by-street combat on the slopes. When the city fell, the Romans burned it. The tale that they sowed the ground with salt is very well known, but historians consider it a later invention. There is no ancient source for it. What is certain is that Punic Carthage was destroyed, and for about a century the site lay largely empty.

Now look for the excavated ruins on the southern slope. Archaeologists call this area the Punic quarter, and it is sometimes named after Hannibal. Here is the first surprise. These remains survived because of the Romans. When Rome rebuilt Carthage as a colony, engineers cut off the top of the hill. They pushed huge amounts of earth and debris down the slopes. That fill buried the older Punic houses and protected them for two thousand years.

Walk among those foundations slowly. You can see narrow streets laid out on a regular plan. The houses had small rooms, and some had cisterns cut into the ground to store rainwater. Look closely at the floors where they survive. Some are made of crushed pottery and mortar, with small white stone chips set into the surface. Nearby, you will also notice massive Roman walls and pillars. They held up the platform the Romans built on top.

That platform carried the centre of Roman Carthage. A forum, temples, and large public buildings stood on the flattened summit. The Roman city became one of the most important in the empire's African provinces. Little of that Roman centre stands today. Most of its stone was taken away over the centuries and reused in later buildings, some of them far beyond Carthage. So the hill you see is a layered place: Punic below, Roman above, and modern on top.

The modern layer is impossible to miss. The large cathedral behind you dates from the late nineteenth century, when Tunisia was under French rule. It was dedicated to Saint Louis, King Louis the Ninth of France. Here is the second surprise. Louis died near Carthage in 1270, during a crusade to North Africa. The building is no longer used for worship. Today it is called the Acropolium, and it hosts concerts and cultural events.

Also on the hilltop is the National Museum of Carthage. It holds finds from across the ancient city. These include Punic objects, Roman mosaics, sculpture, and everyday items such as lamps and coins. If you want to understand the scattered ruins around Carthage, the museum helps to connect them. The Carthage archaeological site as a whole is listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. Byrsa is only one part of it.

Before you leave, walk to the edge of the hill and look toward the sea. You can trace the line of the coast and the white houses of the suburbs. Look toward the shore for two small harbours. One of them is circular. These are the remains of the Punic ports, including the military harbour where Carthage kept its warships. From up here, you can understand why the founders chose this place. It watches the water in every direction.

Stay a little longer. Listen to the wind in the pines and the cars on the roads below. People live, work, and swim all around this ancient ground. Under the gardens and streets, more of old Carthage almost certainly waits. When you walk back down the slope, notice the stone under your feet once more. Some of it was shaped by Punic hands, some by Roman ones. You are walking on both cities at once.