Getting off the TGM (suburban train line from Tunis) at Carthage Hannibal or Carthage Dermech, it's a short, steep walk to the top of Byrsa Hill. The entire site is visible from the summit, with amazing views through cypress trees to the ancient Punic ports and the intense blue of the Tunis Gulf.
The hill was the ancient city's spiritual heart. In Punic times, it was occupied by a temple to the Carthaginian god Eschmoun. The Romans destroyed most of the Punic structures and levelled off the top, to create a massive space - 336m by 323m - to hold their capitol and forum. Here stood temples, a library, a 30m-high judicial basilica, and several piazzas. All this was in turn destroyed as the fall of Rome unleashed a free-for-all for building materials, but the foundations were left, which have allowed archaeologists to work out the layout and scale of the buildings, delineated on small podiums outside the museum.
Most exciting, just below the summit, is a small, well-preserved section of a Punic residential quarter that was buried and filled with earth - and thus preserved - during Roman levelling operations. This dates from the time of Hannibal (around the 3rd century BC) and is a marvellously evocative place to wander. The neat remains show a street grid with small, careful, domestic structures, some of which were once five stories high, complete with subterranean cisterns, and ground-floor shops.
