Both Giovanna and I missed getting to go to El Jem the first time during the trip to the south. We decided to take a trip down and see it one weekend.
The theater is rather overwhelming as it is the largest thing in town and dwarfs even the grand mosque. Depending on whom you ask, this is either the second or third largest coliseum in the world. In front of it are the one in Rome and maybe one other in Libya. We wandered all around inside and up to the top levels. Had one of the Beys not felt like blowing up about half of it to kill a rival Bey’s followers, it’d be a much more complete coliseum. It seems that most of the great Roman monuments have suffered a similar fate over the years.
Outside of the coliseum, we walked south to the museum. It has mosaics rivaling anything seen in the Bardo. We spent maybe an hour wandering through the halls and on the grounds. There were a total of three huge villas which had been transported to the site by the museum from around El Jem. They were quite impressive, the biggest spanning a space of about 3000 square meters. That house is the largest in all of Africa from the roman world. Pretty amazing that the little Podunk town of El Jem could have such wealth in the past!
Across the street and the railroad tracks from the museum, we ran into the original coliseum from 100 BC. The newer one at the center of town is from 284 or so AD. This one was melting into the earth but was still pretty neat. It had a flock of sheep grazing outside and a donkey eating inside.
