Djemila is small enough to allow you to walk around the entire site comfortably in half a day. But spend longer here, linger in the temples and markets, stroll through the bath chambers, or just lie down on one of the pavements or in the shade of villa walls (as a number of locals were doing during our visit); the magic will be felt and this unique place will be better understood. The museum is to the left on entering the site and is best visited before the ruins. At quiet times, it is kept locked, but will be opened if you ask at the entrance to the site. Outside the museum building there are many tombstones and other funerary sculptures, the outer walls lined with mosaics salvaged from the site, the covered court housing busts of the emperor Septimus Severus and his wife, Julia Domna. The mosaics, which line most of the interior walls, are more impressive. Among the treasures here are a mosaic showing a hunting scene; the 10m-long so-called Mosaic of the Donkey, which shows a huge range of local animals; and the inscription of Bishop Cressonius, a statement of faith lifted from the floor of the South Basilica. The masterpiece – one of the greatest North African mosaics – is of the Legend of Dionysos, brought from the House of Bacchus and now in the third hall. The mosaic shows four scenes in the legend of Dionysos: being nursed by the nymph Nysa; being carried on a tiger; an offering made at a cult festival in winter; and an initiation scene during which a woman turns her head from a phallus. The mosaic’s central panel shows another scene from the Dionysos myth in which the nymph Ambrosia is murdered by King Lycurgus. The design and execution suggest the level of sophistication achieved in ancient Djemila. Also in this last room is a 4th- to 5th-century mosaic of men on foot and horse, hunting lion, boar and panther – note the kneeling hunter levelling his spear at a leaping lion. In the cabinets, a range of objects found at the site, including medical instruments, door locks, jewellery and pottery objects, help to give an idea of how life was lived. Also worth taking in here is the scale model of the ruins, which gives a useful overview of what is to come. From the museum, cross the meadow directly to the ruins. This will bring you to the end of the later extension of the cardo maximus. This street, which runs north–northwest, crosses the centre of Djemila. Passing a series of houses, after some 50m you will pass on the left the Grand Baths, built in AD 183 during the reign of Emperor Commodius. These were designed along a symmetrical plan where a double-sided exercise room leads to two changing rooms and then on to the hot, tepid and cold rooms. The baths are well preserved and below floor level, beyond the hot room, you can see where fires were stoked to provide heat. Water was stored in cisterns along the north side. Immediately to the south of the baths is the House of Bacchus, a grand mansion built around the beginning of the 5th century, with two gardens and a pool which served as the household fish tank. Continuing north past a ruined fountain (on the left), the cardo comes into the place des Sévères (Square of the Severus family), the centrepiece of the extended town. Immediately to the left is the Arch of Caracalla, decorated with columns and Corinthian capitals. Originally it was graced with statues of the emperor and his parents, Septimus Severus and Julia Domna. This was the town’s west gate and, at 12.5m high, it made an imposing entrance for people coming from Sétif and beyond. The arch was dismantled by the Duc d’Orleans in 1839, ready to be shipped to Paris, but when the duke died three years later the project was scrapped. The arch was reconstructed in 1922. Immediately to the north of the arch was a fabric market, built in the 360s, and a public latrine. Across the expanse of the square stands the Temple of the Severan Family. Reached by a grand staircase, fronted by rows of massive Corinthian columns, this early-3rd-century building is one of Cuicul’s most prominent landmarks, just as Septimus Severus would have wanted it. The statues of the emperor and his wife, on display in the museum, were found here. Across the square, the cardo maximus enters the old wall and into the original settlement. A building on the right, marked with a phallus, has often been mistaken as a brothel, an unlikely attribution: brothels would have been placed in less central locations. Rather than being a shop sign, the phallus is more likely to have been a totem, a good-luck charm to bring fertility or wealth. The cardo then leads past a row of large houses and through an arch to the old forum, a paved area, 48m by 44m. Originally lined with porticoes, it was flanked by three of the town’s most important buildings: the curia, a basilica that served as town hall; and the capitol, the central temple dedicated to Jupiter, Juno and Minerva. Little remains to distinguish these buildings, although there is a fascinating stone altar with a scene of animal sacrifice carved on its side. There is more to be seen in the Market of Cosinius, which is lined with tables on which traders spread their wares. There is plenty of decorative carving to be spotted as you walk around this delightful enclosure, which makes it easy to imagine how it must have been when the stalls were full of olives, wheat, hunks of meat, fish from across the hills and whatever else Roman Cuicul fancied for dinner. Also here is a carved stone that shows how weights and measures were checked. Immediately below the market, but entered from the cardo, there is a subterranean prison, presumably used to hold traders and others found to be cheating. The arches and vaults are impressive and the place is still evocative. Heading back south across the forum and up towards the place des Sévères, as you leave the original town walls, with the remains of the public granary on your left, take the path to the left of the Temple of the Severan Family. This will lead past a Latin inscription declaring that Julius Crescens and the executor of his will, Caius Julius Didius Crescentianus, built an arch here decorated with statues of Fortune and of Mars, the colony’s protecting deity. As the path suddenly drops down towards the deep valley, it leads to the theatre, cut into the hillside in the 2nd century. The theatre was placed outside the original walls to avoid jams for the 3000 people who attended plays and other performances. The Christian quarter lies at the southern, upper end of the town, the furthest from the original enclosure walls. At the centre of the Christian community was a group of Episcopal buildings: two basilicas, a baptistery and chapel. The baptistery is the most easily identified beneath a dome constructed by archaeologists to preserve the mosaics that adorn the floors. Beside it are baths, perhaps for religious purification, and the northern basilica, a 6th-century building where services were held immediately after baptisms. This building was linked by a corridor to the larger basilica of Cresconius, named after the bishop whose name was celebrated on a large mosaic, now in the museum. Forty metres long, its central nave lined with elaborately topped columns, its floor covered in mosaics, this basilica seems to have been the last significant structure built in Cuicul, presumably after the Byzantines had re-established themselves in North Africa, a last flourish before the town died.
