Limisa (today Aïn-Lemsa) is a town and archaeological site in Kairouan Governorate,

Tunisia Tunisia, officially the Republic of Tunisia, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It is bordered by Algeria to the west and southwest, Libya to the southeast, and the Mediterranean Sea to the north and east. Tunisia also shares m ...

. It is located 50 kilometers west of

kairouan Kairouan (, ), also spelled El Qayrawān or Kairwan ( , ), is the capital of the Kairouan Governorate in Tunisia and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The city was founded by the Umayyads around 670, in the period of Caliph Mu'awiya (reigned 661� ...

. The town was a

Roman Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2025. It is among the world's oldest and largest international institut ...

diocese. The street pattern of the village is fairly regular in its layout and terrace fields move down the hill from the town to the nearby

wadi Wadi ( ; ) is a river valley or a wet (ephemerality, ephemeral) Stream bed, riverbed that contains water only when heavy rain occurs. Wadis are located on gently sloping, nearly flat parts of deserts; commonly they begin on the distal portion ...

Oued Maarouf. The Parc National Djebel Serj is to the north of the town, but the town is best known for the ruins of a

Byzantine The Byzantine Empire, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centred on Constantinople during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Having survived the events that caused the fall of the Western Roman E ...

fort A fortification (also called a fort, fortress, fastness, or stronghold) is a military construction designed for the defense of territories in warfare, and is used to establish rule in a region during peacetime. The term is derived from La ...

known as Ksar Lemsa. The Cave Mine is nearby.

History

During antiquity, Limisa was a

Roman Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of Roman civilization *Epistle to the Romans, shortened to Romans, a letter w ...

Berber Berber or Berbers may refer to: Ethnic group * Berbers, an ethnic group native to Northern Africa * Berber languages, a family of Afro-Asiatic languages Places * Berber, Sudan, a town on the Nile People with the surname * Ady Berber (1913–196 ...

civitas In Ancient Rome, the Latin term (; plural ), according to Cicero in the time of the late Roman Republic, was the social body of the , or citizens, united by Roman law, law (). It is the law that binds them together, giving them responsibilitie ...

in the

province A province is an administrative division within a country or sovereign state, state. The term derives from the ancient Roman , which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire, Roman Empire's territorial possessions ou ...

Byzacena Byzacena (or Byzacium) (, ''Byzakion'') was a Late Roman province in the central part of Roman North Africa, which is now roughly Tunisia, split off from Africa Proconsularis. History At the end of the 3rd century AD, the Roman emperor Dioclet ...

. The remains of the town have been identified with ruins at Henchir-Boudja near modern Limisa. Little is known of the ancient Roman city of Limisa. A few excavations have been carried out and only the

citadel A citadel is the most fortified area of a town or city. It may be a castle, fortress, or fortified center. The term is a diminutive of ''city'', meaning "little city", because it is a smaller part of the city of which it is the defensive core. ...

and the small Roman theater are known. The municipal organization is also only slightly understood, as epigraphic evidence indicates Roman-dominated Limisa was initially governed by the

Punic The Punic people, usually known as the Carthaginians (and sometimes as Western Phoenicians), were a Semitic people who migrated from Phoenicia to the Western Mediterranean during the Early Iron Age. In modern scholarship, the term ''Punic'' ...

-style dual magistracy, the '' sufetes''. An

epigraphic Epigraphy () is the study of inscriptions, or epigraphs, as writing; it is the science of identifying graphemes, clarifying their meanings, classifying their uses according to dates and cultural contexts, and drawing conclusions about the wr ...

corpus makes it possible to understand some aspects of the city from the architectural point of view as well as from its organization. The city had the status of

at least until the beginning of the reign of the

emperor The word ''emperor'' (from , via ) can mean the male ruler of an empire. ''Empress'', the female equivalent, may indicate an emperor's wife (empress consort), mother/grandmother (empress dowager/grand empress dowager), or a woman who rules ...

Septimius Severus Lucius Septimius Severus (; ; 11 April 145 – 4 February 211) was Roman emperor from 193 to 211. He was born in Leptis Magna (present-day Al-Khums, Libya) in the Roman province of Africa. As a young man he advanced through cursus honorum, the ...

then as a

Municipium In ancient Rome, the Latin term (: ) referred to a town or city. Etymologically, the was a social contract among ('duty holders'), or citizens of the town. The duties () were a communal obligation assumed by the in exchange for the privileges ...

sometime before 208. From an architectural point of view, epigraphy mentions an arch and the restoration of thermal baths built under Constantine at the end of the 4th century. According to

Victor of Vita Victor Vitensis (or Victor of Vita; born circa 430) was an African bishop of the Province of Byzacena (called Vitensis from his See of Vita). His importance rests on his ''Historia persecutionis Africanae Provinciae, temporibus Genserici et Hunir ...

the

basilica In Ancient Roman architecture, a basilica (Greek Basiliké) was a large public building with multiple functions that was typically built alongside the town's forum. The basilica was in the Latin West equivalent to a stoa in the Greek Eas ...

s of Lemsa had been burned in 305. The site was excavated between 1966 and 1969 by K. Belkhodja.

Ksar Lemsa

At Henchir-Boudja may be the ruins of a

fortress A fortification (also called a fort, fortress, fastness, or stronghold) is a military construction designed for the defense of territories in warfare, and is used to establish rule in a region during peacetime. The term is derived from L ...

, with 15 feet wide walls and towers.

Sidney Toy Sidney Toy (1875–1967) was a British architect and architectural historian. Life Toy was born on 15 February 1875 in Redruth in Cornwall. Toy became a Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1924. While travelling in the Middle ...

, ''History of Fortification from 3000 BC to AD 1700'' (Barnsley: Pen and Sword, 19 Sep. 2006 ) p. 51 (1st ed. 1955; 2nd ed. 1966).

References

{{coord, 36, 02, 13, N, 9, 41, 29, E, display=title Ancient Berber cities Catholic titular sees in Africa Roman towns and cities in Tunisia