Founded by the Phoenicians, who called it Hadrumet, and probably before Carthage, Sousse was an independent city until the sixth century BC, when it came under Carthaginian influence. After the Punic Wars and the destruction of Carthage by the Romans it was established as a colony by trajan in the second century AD, and again became a "productive city" and a prosperous trading centre. A century later, Hadrumet suffered the effects of Rome's reprisals against the Emperor Gordian, the independent ruler of El Djem and builder of the great amphitheatre. It rose again and became hunericopolis under the short reign of the Vandals. The Byzantines gave it a third name and, as Justinianopolis, it withstood the siege of the conquering Arab Okba Ibn Nafâa, companion of the prophet and founder of Kairouan.

It was under the Aghlabid dynasty that the Arabs, finally reconciled with the sea, gave Sousse a new lease of life which still resounds through some of its monuments. A strategic coastal city, Sousse was subsequently occupied by the Normans in the twelfth century, the Spanish in the sixteenth century and the French in the eighteenth century. In the Second World War the town was bombed several times before being liberated in 1943.