Tunisia: After the Revolution

April 8, 2012

from the train window the next afternoon, I watched as olive groves slipped by beneath an electric blue sky. In El Jem, auto-parts shops and a few downbeat restaurants lined the main street. But as I wheeled my suitcase through the dust, the object of my quest appeared at the end of the thoroughfare. Built in the third century A.D., El Jem’s magnificent Roman amphitheater was then the third largest in the empire. Today this Unesco World Heritage site still looks colossal.