The Amphitheatre

The enormous, elliptically shaped mass, is 148 m long by 122 m wide and has a 427 m perimeter. Though smaller than the Collosseum in Rome, it was the third largest amphitheatre in the Roman world, and considerably larger than those at Arles, Nimes and Verona.
When one considers that there was no stone to build the massive amphitheatre in the immediate vicinity and that the nearest quarries were more than 30 kilometres away, then one gets some idea of the task facing the builders and the wealth of the promoter. No inscription remains to indicate who this might have been, but the most likely hypothesis attributes the construction to a Proconsul of Ifriqiya, the ephemeral Emperor Gordien I, an ostentatious patron of letters, the arts and sport-and an enthusiastic follower of the games.
The simplicity of the décor, attributable to the use of stone which was too soft to be finely sculpted, and the rhythmic heaviness of the arches, gives the building an austere sort of majesty.