The Capitol
Four Corinthian columns, 8.5 m tall.
Atef Ouni — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Youssefbensaad — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Smailtn — CC BY-SA 4.0 · GIRAUD Patrick — CC BY-SA 2.5 · Kalechnizar — CC BY-SA 4.0
Thuburbo Majus is the ruin of a prosperous Roman town in northern Tunisia, spread over a hillside above the Oued Miliane near El Fahs. Tunisia's heritage agency lists a forum quarter, summer and winter baths, a palaestra, large houses and some sixteen temples, overlooked by a Capitol built in 168 AD. The name is Libyco-Berber; the Romans added Maius, greater, probably to tell it apart from Thuburbo Minus, today's Tebourba. Veterans were settled here under Augustus, Hadrian made it a municipium in 128 and Commodus a colony in 188, and it flourished from about 150 to 250. Restored in the fourth century, it then dwindled; an oil mill was set up beneath the Capitol, and the last traces of life date from the early seventh century. Charles Tissot identified the ruins in 1857. Four of the Capitol's Corinthian columns, 8.5 m tall, stand re-erected above the square forum. Nearby stand the Temple of Mercury, with its round court of eight columns, the Temple of Baalat, the market, both bath complexes and the Palaestra of the Petronii, an exercise court given in 225, with one colonnade re-erected. The finest finds, including the colossal head of a 7 m Jupiter, are in the Bardo National Museum in Tunis. The site lies just off the RN3, about 3 km north of El Fahs and 60 km south-west of central Tunis by road, about an hour's drive. The Zaghouan Water Temple is 20 km east as the crow flies (about 32 km by road), an easy day-trip pairing, and Dougga lies about 80 km west by road.
Four Corinthian columns, 8.5 m tall.
An exercise court given in 225.
A round court of eight columns.
Off the RN3 near El Fahs, Zaghouan governorate
At the Bardo National Museum in Tunis, which has a room named after the site. Its mosaics there include two boxers and a poet with theatre masks, and the head and sandalled foot of the Capitol's Jupiter are on show too.
Archaeologists tell them apart by their heated rooms, which face north in the Summer Baths and south in the Winter Baths. The Summer Baths are the larger of the two and stand right by the forum.