Roman amphitheatre of El Jem
— a Colosseum standing alone in a small town.
Not only on a wall.
“A third-century Roman amphitheatre rising out of the modern town of El Jem, in central Tunisia. Three storeys of arches in pale sandstone, big enough to seat about thirty-five thousand people — among the largest in the Roman world after the Colosseum in Rome and the ruins at Capua. Built under Gordian, probably never finished. The wheat country around it has not changed much. UNESCO took it onto the World Heritage list in 1979. — from the studio
Roman amphitheatre of El Jem, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
The amphitheatre stands in El Jem, the modern town built over Roman Thysdrus in the Mahdia governorate of central Tunisia, about 200 kilometres south of Tunis and 65 kilometres south of Sousse. Construction is dated to around 238 AD, under the short reign of Gordian I, and the building was probably never finished. The structure is roughly 148 by 122 metres on the long axes and rises three tiered storeys to about 36 metres. Estimated seating capacity is 35,000. UNESCO inscribed it as a World Heritage Site in 1979.
The amphitheatre is built of large blocks of pale local sandstone, quarried from the Sahel inland and hauled to a town that was never on the sea but grew rich on olive oil and grain. The arena floor is intact enough to walk; the hypogeum — the underground passages and animal cells beneath it — is open to visitors and still carries grooves cut for the wooden lifts that brought gladiators and beasts to the floor. Quarrying for stone for nearby Kairouan damaged the upper tiers over the centuries.
Open daily under Tunisia's national antiquities ticket. The site is staffed by guides who keep the hypogeum lit and accessible. Summer brings the El Jem International Symphonic Music Festival, which has used the arena as a concert venue since 1985. The town itself is small — about twenty thousand people — and the amphitheatre is two minutes' walk from the railway station on the Tunis-Sfax line. Early morning and late afternoon hold the best light; the pale stone glares at midday.