Tuesday 16th April

Left the hotel at 7am on way to the first Roman site travelling down through the hills & forests on to a fertile plain. Chemtou was a town built around a marble quarry from which marble was shipped by river to all parts of the Roman Empire. A German group is working there excavating & there is a small theatre & an excellent museum of the area showing how the marble was mined & shipped.

We then drove south to Bulla Regia a Numidian then a Roman city with many underground houses. The Romans built their houses here with one storey underground for use in summer & the other above for winter use. The mosaics were very fine indeed in 3 of the houses & it was clear that it had been quite a large Roman town.
From here we drove south east to Dougga, another Roman town built on a hillside overlooking another fertile plain. Here there was a beautifull partly restored temple & a magnificent 3500 seat theatre which was built into the hillside still with some of the pillars of the stage. Again this had been a Numidian site before the Romans & there was an ancient mausoleum below the Roman city. One of the features was the 12 seater loo similar in design to one at Ephesus which was very well preserved. On our return to Tunis we passed vast vineyards with quite young vines & still everywhere flocks of sheep & the occasional small herds of cattle. We were back in the Tunisian hotel & are here for 2 nights.