City
Utica Colonia
Henchir-bou-Chateur
Listen to the story
Utica Colonia was the oldest Phoenician colony on Tunisian soil, older even than Carthage according to ancient writers, and its name probably goes back to a Punic word for island. The ruins lie at Henchir Bou Chateur in Tunisia, now eight Roman miles from the sea, because the river Bagradas has silted up the old coastline. Having sided with Rome before the Third Punic War, the city became the seat of the governor of the new province of Africa, and here Cato took his own life in 46 BC. On the map its two towers rest on a plain, thin rectangle, a base drawn this way at just one other town, Tarquinii.