Carthaga (Tunisia)

'Here,' our young female private guide said enthusiastically, 'you can see where the temple would have been-'
Having absorbed a hurried account of various Punic wars, I'd stopped listening by then, and was content to gaze down the hill at the modern crouched white villas of today's Carthage stretching down to the sea on one side. On the other, a vista that stretched as far as Tunis sandwiched between its salt lake and the sea. The sky was ...
...on the other side of the Mediterranean - Africa. Tunisia.
And we were on an important hill that for centuries had counted as a critical centre of civilisation. I was determined to see Carthage.
'You want to see the museum,' the helpful lady behind reception at our hotel had said, 'and the ruins.'
Wanting to escape being press-ganged into a tour by an over-eager taxi driver my husband and I decided we'd do Carthage on our own. ... more

'Here,' our young female private guide said enthusiastically, 'you can see where the temple would have been-'
Having absorbed a hurried account of various Punic wars, I'd stopped listening by then, and was content to gaze down the hill at the modern crouched white villas of today's Carthage stretching down to the sea on one side. On the other, a vista that stretched as far as Tunis sandwiched between its salt lake and the sea. The sky was blue, the sunshine warm although it was January. We were on the other side of the Mediterranean - Africa. Tunisia.
And we were on an important hill that for centuries had counted as a critical centre of civilisation. I was determined to see Carthage.
'You want to see the museum,' the helpful lady behind reception at our hotel had said, 'and the ruins.'
Wanting to escape being press-ganged into a tour by an over-eager taxi driver my husband and I decided we'd do Carthage on our own. The Carthage ruins are spread out over an area a couple of miles in circumference. We were prepared for some walking.
However, the map of the Carthage ruins, given to us at the Tourism Office in Tunis, had the archaeological park marked in the wrong place. We'd walked about a mile in the wrong direction before we realised this, but we'd wandered some way into the real Carthage. It felt like the South of France. Low villas behind walls with lush gardens wound down to the sea. We passed the Hotel de Ville, a 1930s art deco building which dated its surroundings to a time when this part of Tunisia was a playground for the rich. We passed a villa marked as a residence of the Slovakian ambassador. We stopped in a very well heeled Salon de The and drank thick hot chocolate and Italian expressso.
Very different from the day before when we'd decided to wander from the Bardo Museum, on the outskirts of Tunis, back into the centre and ended up wandering along the dusty unmade road beside a tram line. This was down at heel suburban Tunis. No one leapt out and tried to sell us anything. No one tried to entice us into their shop. Unnerved, we had eventually given up and hailed a taxi home.
But the real Carthage…?
Having walked up the hill to the Carthage museum, and seen the charred ruins of Hannibal's artisan houses and concrete arranged to show what would have been the forum, we walked back down the hill, and to the sea. A couple of Tunisian men sat on an upturned finished boat chewing at their cigarettes and didn't even notice our arrival. The archaeological park was rather disappointing. Wading through long grass we tried to decipher signs which had been put up thirty years ago and were in German, having been financed by a German expedition.
'I wonder if anything has been spent on this place since the French left in 1956,' my husband speculated.
In various street corners of Carthage, ruins remain, and most of these lie in thick undisturbed grass with nothing to see what they are or whether they are important.
A trio of stray cats, which are endemic, mewed as we walked past Carthage police station and post office and to see the Baths.
A sign warned that photography in the direction of the palace was forbidden. And there it was, as big as a village, the Presidential palace on the hill above. I decided to be rather circumspect with my camera.
By now we'd walked several miles more than we needed to, hampered by the map we'd now given up on, and only aided by occasional signs to the ruined sights.
'Let's just see the amphitheatre, and then let's go home,' I suggested.
We walked past a policeman directing traffic back uphill away from the sea. At the theatre we were leapt on by the usual souvenir sellers offering their marvels for only one dinar (about 50p) apiece.
We gave up after the theatre and hailed a taxi. We sped past the French President's residence, thick with armed guards.
I'm still wondering what the real Carthage is today. I can imagine it in the period between the world wars as a place of sunshine with the romance of the ruins, just starting to then be uncovered. Now, it's hidden behind the white walls of the villas while in the streets stray cats and naïve tourists lurk.

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