Hammamet: El-Jem Colosseum Museum

Wanderingdragon
Stephen & Anne
Thu 15 Jul 2010 13:24

36.22.388N 10.32.741E

 

We then left and drove to the colosseum museum. We needed the tickets we bought at the colosseum to gain entry here (good job we bought them earlier).

 

The guide book describes this as a small museum. We thought it gave the large Bardo museum in Tunis a run for its money. Thankfully the coaches don’t visit here so we had the place to ourselves.

 

There were quite a few rooms like the one pictured below, full of mosaics, both on the walls and the floors. Some of them were so large only portions were on the wall.

 

Outside there were 4 roman villas that had been excavated, one of which had been restored. We were given a guided tour of the restored villa by one of the archeologists that had worked on the restoration. He was very enthusiastic, but unfortunately his English wasn’t that good and he kept getting excited and lapsing into French. It was nice to see mosaics in their original settings. The mosaics in the bathroom had a fish theme, the children’s bedroom had animals, and the dinning room had fish, chickens and other food items depicted in it.

 

Hopefully all our readers have recovered from the mosaic pictures from last year – as there are lots more below including the headless statues of emperors and the remains of the Roman villas.
 
 

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