Underground floors
An escape from the heat.
Noomen9 — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Verity Cridland — CC BY 2.0 · Verity Cridland — CC BY 2.0 · Verity Cridland — CC BY 2.0
A Berber, then Punic, then Roman town in the fertile Medjerda valley near Jendouba, once one of the capitals of the Numidian kingdom under Masinissa, which is where its Latin name Bulla Regia, Royal Bulla, comes from. Its fame rests on its underground Roman houses, built under the emperor Hadrian in the second century AD: two-storey homes with an ordinary upper floor and a lower floor dug beneath the ground around a courtyard, where families retreated from the fierce summer heat. Nothing like them exists elsewhere in the Roman world. Many of these houses keep their mosaic floors in place, so you see them as they were nearly two thousand years ago, among them the House of the Hunt. The site also has a theatre, baths, temples and a small museum. The site is quiet and rarely crowded, so you can take your time. It pairs well with Chemtou and its marble quarries on one tour from Tabarka or Jendouba.
An escape from the heat.
As they always were.
And the baths.
Near Jendouba, about 60 km south of Tabarka
Its Roman houses with an underground floor for escaping the heat, with mosaics still in place.