Few places in the world cause such instant amazement as El Jem. You arrive in a modest, dusty town in the Tunisian Sahel, among olive groves, and suddenly, towering over the low houses, a colossus appears: a Roman amphitheatre of golden stone, almost intact, rising like a Colosseum transplanted to North Africa. It is the largest Roman monument on the African continent and one of the best-preserved amphitheatres in existence, declared a World Heritage Site by Unesco in 1979. Watching it emerge from the cluster of houses, without the wall of modern buildings that surrounds the Colosseum in Rome, is an experience that is hard to forget.
The amphitheatre of El Jem was built around 238 AD on top of the prosperous Roman city of Thysdrus, which had grown rich on the olive oil trade. With room for some 35.000 spectators, it is the third-largest amphitheatre in the Roman world, after the Colosseum and the one at Capua. Unlike the Colosseum, here you can wander freely: climb to the upper stands, look out over the arena, go down into the underground passages where gladiators and wild beasts entered, and feel the enormous scale of the building practically on your own outside peak hours.
This guide covers El Jem with a practical eye: how to make the most of your visit to the amphitheatre (the arena, the stands, the underground passages), the excellent Archaeological Museum with its mosaics, how to fit it into a route through the Sahel and the south, how to get there by train and what to expect in terms of prices and opening hours. Whether you come on a day trip from Sousse or stop on your way to Sfax or the desert, El Jem will leave you open-mouthed: a piece of Rome in the middle of Tunisia.
El Jem stands on top of Thysdrus, a town of Punic-Berber origin that under the Roman Empire became one of the richest cities in the province of Africa Proconsularis, thanks to the olive oil trade. At its peak, in the 3rd century AD, Thysdrus had tens of thousands of inhabitants and commissioned its gigantic amphitheatre around 238 AD, probably under the proconsul Gordian. That same year, the city was the scene of the revolt that proclaimed Gordian I emperor against Maximinus Thrax, in the turbulent 'year of the six emperors'. The repression that followed and the decline of the olive oil trade sank the city. The amphitheatre survived as a fortress and refuge over the centuries —including the resistance of the legendary Berber queen Al-Kahina against the Arabs in the 7th century— and was partly dismantled in modern times. Today, restored and protected by Unesco since 1979, it is the great symbol of Tunisia's Roman past. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The central-eastern coastal strip, heart of Tunisia's olive country and cradle of its politicians: Sousse and Monastir with their medieval ribats, the colossal amphitheatre of El Jem and Bourguiba's home town, among beaches and harbours.
Read the history of The Sahel and the east coast →They depart from Monastir, 55 km away. If you book from this link we earn a commission and you pay no more.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Before the stone colossus we admire today was built, El Jem was called Thysdrus and was a modest town of Punic-Berber origin that grew up in the orbit of Phoenician Carthage. It sat in the fertile interior of the Sahel, on a plain dotted with olive groves, and had no port and no great mineral resources. Its wealth quite literally sprang from the earth, and more precisely from the olive tree.
Rome destroyed Carthage in 146 BC and folded the region into the province of Africa. Thysdrus then became part of the Roman world and was transformed. Olive oil was an everyday necessity across the whole Empire, used for cooking, lighting, hygiene and rituals, and the plains of the Sahel were ideal for olive trees, so they were soon covered in plantations. Thysdrus sat at the heart of this trade, sending oil to the coastal ports and from there to Rome.
The city reached its peak in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD. It is estimated to have had tens of thousands of inhabitants, with prosperous streets of villas richly decorated with mosaics, plus baths, temples and markets. The mosaics found in those villas, now in the El Jem museum and the Bardo in Tunis, show banquets, hunting scenes, gods and animals. They bear witness to the luxury that oil brought to this inland city. Thysdrus had become one of the richest cities in Roman North Africa, and that wealth would soon be turned into stone.
The symbol of Thysdrus's wealth was its amphitheatre, one of the largest Rome ever built. Historians date its construction to around AD 238, probably promoted by the proconsul Gordian and paid for by the huge fortune the oil trade had produced. It was built of golden limestone from nearby quarries on a monumental scale: about 148 metres long, 122 wide and up to 36 high, with room for some 35,000 spectators.
Those figures make it the third-largest amphitheatre in the Roman world, behind only the Colosseum in Rome and the amphitheatre of Capua, and the largest on the African continent. This was an inland city without the political weight of Rome or Carthage, and the fact that it could afford such a building shows how rich it had become. The amphitheatre was more than a place for shows. It was a statement of power and prestige, a way of announcing that Thysdrus played in the Empire's top league.
Its arena hosted gladiator fights and venationes, the hunts of wild animals brought from all over Africa: lions, leopards, elephants. Beneath the floor, a network of underground galleries (the hypogeum) held the animals and gladiators, who were raised into the arena by lifts and trapdoors. The stands were divided by social rank and could be filled with spectators from all over the surrounding region. Oddly enough, some studies suggest the amphitheatre may never have been fully finished. The political crisis that was about to break may have cut the work short, and that crisis, as it happens, played out in Thysdrus itself.
In the same year the amphitheatre was going up, Thysdrus found itself at the centre of one of the most turbulent episodes in Roman history. It was AD 238, remembered as the 'Year of the Six Emperors' because claimants to the throne came and went at dizzying speed. The emperor Maximinus Thrax, a hard-line soldier, had imposed crushing taxes on the provinces, and his procurator in Africa was squeezing local landowners with excessive taxes and fines.
The anger boiled over in Thysdrus. A group of young landowners, ruined by these demands, led a revolt in which the hated procurator was killed. They knew this amounted to open rebellion against the emperor, so they looked for a respected leader. They pressed the role on the elderly and well-regarded proconsul of Africa, Marcus Antonius Gordianus, and proclaimed him emperor as Gordian I, with his son Gordian II as co-ruler.
The adventure was short and tragic. Within a few weeks, troops loyal to Maximinus defeated the Gordians, who both died, but the revolt had lit the fuse. The Senate in Rome also loathed Maximinus and sided with the African cause. The crisis ended with the fall of Maximinus himself and the rise of Gordian III, grandson of the proconsul of Thysdrus. The reprisals hit the city and its region hard, though, and marked the start of the decline of the wealthy oil capital. Its splendour faded over the following decades.
Once Thysdrus declined, the giant amphitheatre stopped hosting shows, but it was not forgotten. Its stone bulk was still the most imposing building in the area, and over the centuries it was turned again and again into a fortress and refuge. Its massive walls and closed shape made it ideal for holding out against sieges, and different communities took shelter inside it in times of war.
Tradition links the amphitheatre to one of the most legendary figures in North African history: the Kahina (Dihya), the Berber warrior queen who led resistance against the Arab conquest of the Maghreb in the 7th century. According to the stories, the Kahina used the El Jem fortress as a stronghold against the Muslim armies in one of the last great acts of resistance in pre-Islamic North Africa. Whatever the legend may have added to the facts, the story shows the amphitheatre's role as both a symbol and a stronghold for centuries.
In the modern era, under Ottoman rule and then during local conflicts in the 17th century, the building again sheltered rebel communities. As a result it was bombarded, and parts of its walls were knocked down to drive out the people holding out inside. On top of that military damage came centuries of stone stripping, as its blocks were reused for building in nearby villages and even, according to some sources, in projects as far away as the Great Mosque of Kairouan. Even so, the structure held, and much of its impressive arched façade has survived to this day.
The amphitheatre's exceptional value was recognised in the 20th century. Decades of archaeological study, consolidation and restoration stabilised the structure and halted its decay. In 1979 UNESCO added the Amphitheatre of El Jem to the World Heritage List (site No. 38). It was recognised as one of the best-preserved examples of the Roman world's entertainment buildings and as the most impressive Roman monument in Africa.
Today the amphitheatre is Tunisia's great archaeological pride and one of the country's must-see sights, along with Carthage, the Bardo and Dougga. Rome's Colosseum is hemmed in by traffic and crowds. At El Jem, by contrast, you can wander freely and often have the place to yourself: climb the stands, walk on the arena floor, go down into the underground passages and watch the golden stone change colour in the Sahel light. The nearby Archaeological Museum rounds off the visit with a superb collection of the mosaics that once decorated the villas of Thysdrus.
Every summer the amphitheatre also comes alive in a new way with the International Symphonic Music Festival, which fills the ancient venue with classical music under the stars. The colossus was born of the oil trade and survived revolts, wars and plunder, and almost two thousand years later it is still standing. It is no dead ruin but a living stage, and the clearest proof that for a time a small inland town in Tunisia was one of the richest cities in the Roman Empire.
