Travel: Crossroads of the World ; From Remnants of Life Two Millennia Ago to Shopkeepers Selling Baseball Caps, Dyfed Edwards Finds an Enticing Disparity Between Past and Present in the Heat and History of Tunisia

Daily Post › July 25, 2004

Linked as:

Summary

ISTORY seeps from the ochre stone walls of the coliseum at El Jem. It seats 30, 000, a far greater number than the population of what was then, almost 2, 000 years ago, the town of Thysdrus. The citizens of this Roman colony must have tramped from miles to witness the carnage that was offered up to them by their conquerers.

And what they saw ahead of them, rising from the plateau halfway between Sousse and Sfax, could not have been unlike what we saw on the road to El Jem.

See the full content of this document

Extract

Travel: Crossroads of the World ; From Remnants of Life Two Millennia Ago to Shopkeepers Selling Baseball Caps, Dyfed Edwards Finds an Enticing Disparity Between Past and Present in the Heat and History of Tunisia

The coliseum is ragged and beautiful, dwarfing the new housing that press around it like teeth. In dimensions it almost matches its counterpart in Rome, and is one of the most impressive of Africa's Roman monuments.

Within the amphitheatre's walls it's easy to imagine the crow...

See the full content of this document