Antonine Baths of Carthage

The baths were built between 145 (or 146) and 162, in the reign of Antoninus Pius, on the Mediterranean shore; the complex covered about 35,000 m² and was more than 200 metres long. Baths on the scale of the imperial baths of Rome needed a large and steady supply of water, which came from the springs of Zaghouan through an aqueduct whose main channel runs for a little over 90 km; with its tributary channels, including a branch added in Severan times, it is 132 km long. The aqueduct’s date is uncertain: its construction has been linked both with Hadrian’s visit to Africa in 128, which is said to have ended a five-year drought, and with the opening of the baths in 162.

Carthage, rebuilt as a Roman city by Julius Caesar, was the centre of the province of Africa — a major breadbasket of the empire — and by then the second-largest city of the western half of the empire; later it was the city of Apuleius and Tertullian. The ruins of the baths belong to the archaeological site of Carthage, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1979.