Berber town A
Berber settlement probably predated the
Punic one. Imported Greek ceramics dating to the 4th centuryBC have been found.
Punic town Carthage gained control over the town during the 3rd centuryBC, when inscriptions reveal that the inhabitants venerated
Baal Hammon and buried their dead in urns in the Punic style. A capital from a temple of
Tanit is preserved at the site's museum.
Numidian capital Bulla Regia was part of the territory won for
Rome by
Scipio Africanus in 203BC during the
Second Punic War. The
Numidian king
Masinissa "recovered the lands of his ancestors" (as noted in an inscription) and made Bulla his capital in 156BC. One of his sons maintained a palace in the city. Under the Numidians, a regularized orthogonal grid street plan was imposed in the
hellenistic manner on at least part of the earlier irregular system.
Roman colony from the House of Amphitrite The Romans assumed direct control in 46BC, when
Julius Caesar organized the
province of
Africa and rewarded the (perhaps simply neutral) conduct of Bulla during the recent
civil war by making it a
free city (). Under
Hadrian, it was raised to the status of a
Roman colony and its citizens given
full citizenship.
Destruction Bulla Regia slowly lost importance under
Byzantine rule. As elsewhere in the late empire, the local aristocracy found themselves in a position to increase the extent of their houses at the expense of public space: the House of the Fisherman was adapted to link two separate , turning a thoroughfare into a dead end. An earthquake destroyed Bulla Regia, collapsing its first floors into the subterranean floors.
Re-discovery Drifting sand protected the abandoned sites, which were forgotten until the first excavations were begun in 1906, in part spurred by the destruction of the monumental entrance to the Roman city. The
forum, surrounded by
porticoes, was excavated 1949–52. Its public
basilica had an
apse at each end. As a
cathedral, it had a highly unusual cruciform
baptismal font inserted in the center of the rear (west end) of its nave. Its small amphitheater, the subject of a reproach in a sermon of
Augustine of Hippo, retains the crispness of its edges and steps because it lay buried until 1960–61.
Museum and archeological site Bulla Regia is now an archeological site. There is a museum, and underground tours are available. Restoration work aims to protect the buildings, which are well-preserved due to being largely built underground. Most of the elaborate polychrome mosaics are being conserved in-situ, allowing visitors to see them in their original architectural context. The Roman drainage system has been restored to keep the houses from flooding. ==Buildings==