Carthage arose on the Gulf of Tunis within networks linking North Africa and the eastern Mediterranean. Tradition dates its foundation by settlers from Phoenician Tyre to 814 BCE, though archaeology reveals a city developing across the following centuries in interaction with local communities. Its harbors, workshops, sanctuaries, markets, houses, and overseas colonies supported a powerful maritime state. Carthaginian language, religion, institutions, and commerce were related to Phoenician traditions but became distinctly rooted in North Africa. Agriculture and regional control were as important as long-distance seafaring.

Competition with Greek cities and later Rome produced repeated wars. Carthaginian commanders built influence in Sicily, Sardinia, Iberia, and other regions, while the Punic Wars made Hannibal's campaign across the Alps famous. Rome besieged and destroyed Carthage in 146 BCE at the end of the Third Punic War, killing or enslaving inhabitants and dismantling the city. A Roman colony later rose over and beside Punic remains, eventually becoming one of the empire's largest cities and the capital of Africa Proconsularis, enriched by grain, olive oil, trade, and imperial patronage.

Roman Carthage contained a forum, theater, amphitheater, aqueduct, cisterns, villas, basilicas, streets, ports, and the immense Antonine Baths. It also became a major center of Latin Christianity associated with Tertullian, Cyprian, and Augustine's world. Vandals captured the city in 439 CE, Byzantines retook it in 533, and Arab forces destroyed or abandoned much of it in the late seventh century as the regional center shifted. Stone quarrying and later construction dispersed ancient material, while soils and new settlement covered surviving foundations.

Nineteenth- and twentieth-century excavation exposed scattered zones rather than one continuous ancient city. Punic harbors, the Tophet precinct, Byrsa Hill, Roman villas, baths, cisterns, theater, amphitheater, and Christian sites retain original foundations and masonry in varying condition. Some columns, walls, mosaics, and architectural features have been reassembled, stabilized, or partly reconstructed; museums and protective shelters are modern. Urban expansion around modern Carthage has fragmented archaeological context, making conservation dependent on controlling development as well as repairing ruins. UNESCO inscribed the site in 1979.

Tunisia's heritage authorities manage the dispersed archaeological park, with ticketing and access varying among zones and current conditions. Visitors should not treat every standing column as untouched or expect a single entrance to explain the whole city. Carthage's importance lies in the overlap of Punic, Roman, Vandal, Byzantine, Christian, Islamic, colonial archaeological, and modern urban histories. Careful interpretation separates literary tradition from excavated evidence and identifies rebuilt elements. The site's fragmentation is itself historical evidence of destruction, reuse, excavation, and the pressure of a living metropolitan landscape.