Roman pools in a Saharan oasis — where Tunisia's fertile north meets the desert south
Gafsa is an oasis city of 100,000 in south-central Tunisia, sitting at the meeting point of the Tunisian steppe and the northern Sahara at the foot of the Orbata mountain. Its most famous landmark is the Piscines Romaines — two large Roman-era pools (one cold, one warm-fed by a spring) of dark green water in the city centre, still used for swimming and unchanged in form since the 2nd century AD. Gafsa is also the capital of Tunisia's phosphate mining region (one of the world's largest phosphate deposits underlies the Gafsa basin), and its kasbah, ancient medina, and the stark desert landscape…
Gafsa was the ancient Capsa, a Numidian city sacked by the Roman general Marius in 108 BC during the Jugurthine War — a battle that effectively ended Numidian independence and opened North Africa to Roman control. The city served as an important waypoint on the trans-Saharan trade routes linking sub-Saharan Africa to the Mediterranean coast throughout the Roman and medieval Islamic periods. The Hafsid dynasty built the kasbah in the 13th century, and the French phosphate mining operations begun in 1896 transformed Gafsa into an industrial city while preserving its desert-oasis character.