The Amphitheatre of Carthage
The arena of the martyrs of Carthage, with a chapel made beneath it in the nineteenth century.
- Location
- Carthage, Tunisia
- 36.8531° N · 10.3178° E
- Type
- Roman amphitheatre and site of Christian martyrdom
- The excavated oval of a Roman amphitheatre, with a vault beneath the arena made into a marble-paved chapel in the nineteenth century
- Dedication
- Not a church. The arena where the martyrs of Carthage were put to death.
Where the Passion of Perpetua ends
Perpetua and Felicity are named in the Roman Canon at every Mass that uses it. Most Catholics have heard the names for years without knowing that a young mother and a slave woman died together in a North African arena, and that one of them kept a diary until the day before which survives. The amphitheatre is where that account stops. Reading the Passion here is the natural thing to do, and it is not a long text.
203, and what is certain
Under Septimius Severus a group of catechumens and their catechist were arrested near Carthage and imprisoned in the city. Perpetua wrote in prison: about her infant son, her father's pleading, her visions, the ordinary misery of the cell. Felicity, eight months pregnant, feared she would be held back from martyrdom because the law forbade executing a pregnant woman; she gave birth to a daughter days before. On March 7, 203 they went into the arena and were killed. The account was read publicly in the African churches, and Augustine preached on them more than once: two pearls, he said, shone in the Church that day with a single light. The amphitheatre itself is securely identified. The vault beneath it is not: the nineteenth century took it for the martyrs' prison, and that identification has never been more than that.
The amphitheatre is a named component of the UNESCO World Heritage property, listed with its association to the condemnation of the Christian martyrs.
Three groups of martyrs are remembered here: the Scillitan martyrs of about 180, Perpetua, Felicity and their companions in 203, and the martyrs of Abitina, whose answer under interrogation, sine dominica non possumus, we cannot live without the Lord's day, became a Christian commonplace.
Six Christians from Tebourba were arrested in 203: Revocatus and Felicitas, both slaves; Vibia Perpetua, of noble birth; and Saturninus, Secundulus and Saturus. Secundulus died before the day of the games; five were put to death in the arena.
A vault beneath the arena was cleared by Pere Alfred-Louis Delattre in 1881 and, at Cardinal Lavigerie's wish, made into a chapel paved in white marble. An inscription was set over its entrance in 1903 naming the martyrs and the date.
Perpetua kept a diary in prison until the day before she died. The ground where it ends is this one.
There is no liturgy here and the chapel below is a nineteenth-century memorial, not a functioning church. What belongs to this place is the text. Bring the Passion of Saints Perpetua and Felicity, read it, and be quiet. The feast is March 7.
- That the amphitheatre is certain and the identification of the vault below is not
- That Perpetua's diary is her own voice, not a hagiographer's
- That the Church named these two women in her central prayer and has kept saying the names for eighteen centuries
- That the executions were public entertainment, and that the martyrs' refusal, not the violence, is what the Church remembers
Do Not Miss
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01
The Passion itself
Read Perpetua's own sections. They are short, and they are hers.
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02
The arena floor
Securely identified. This is the place.
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03
The 1903 inscription
If the crypt is open. A nineteenth-century act of memory, worth seeing as that.
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04
Silence
More appropriate here than another list of things to see.
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- Silence More appropriate here than another list of things to see.
How to Visit
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No liturgy on the site
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The feast of Saints Perpetua and Felicity on March 7
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Reading the Passion of Saints Perpetua and Felicity in the arena itself
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Mass at the Carthage and La Marsa parish nearby
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- Mass at the Carthage and La Marsa parish nearby
One zone of a dispersed site; the crypt may be shut.
The amphitheatre is one of several separately managed zones within the Carthage World Heritage property. Access to the vault chapel beneath the arena is not reliably open and is not published in advance. The nearest Mass is at the Carthage and La Marsa parish.
- Feast
- March 7, Saints Perpetua and Felicity
- Getting there
- TGM light rail from Tunis, within the Carthage site
- The crypt
- Access to the vault chapel is not guaranteed; ask on the day
- Bring
- The Passion of Saints Perpetua and Felicity
Current access
Treat the vault below as a possibility rather than a plan. The arena itself is the destination and is always there.
Prayer and custody
Perpetua's own account breaks off the day before she died, in this place. Reading it standing here is the whole reason to make the detour.
Relics, Tombs, Sacred Objects
Tomb and Burial
- No burial is claimed here. The martyrs of 203 were buried elsewhere in Carthage; a slab bearing their names was found in the Basilica Maiorum in 1907.
Relics and Sacred Tradition
- No relic is kept here. What the place holds is the ground of the martyrdom itself.
Sacred Objects
- The arena
- The chapel made in 1903 in a vault beneath the arena, with its commemorative inscription
Connected Saints
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Saint Cyprian Remembered here among the martyrs of Carthage Cyprian, bishop of Carthage, was put to death in 258. He is remembered with the other martyrs of the city, though the ancient accounts place his execution elsewhere in Carthage rather than in the arena.
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Saint Felicity Place of martyrdom, March 7, 203 Felicitas was a slave and pregnant at her arrest. She gave birth in prison and went to her death with Perpetua.
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Saint Perpetua Place of martyrdom, March 7, 203 Perpetua was twenty-two, of noble birth, and nursing an infant son when she was arrested. Her prison diary is preserved in the Passion of Saints Perpetua and Felicity, one of the earliest surviving Christian texts written by a woman.
Continue Your Pilgrimage
Map
Hero image sourced from Wikimedia Commons (Elena Tatiana Chis, CC BY-SA 4.0), an elevated view that reads the arena's form. The 1881 Delattre identification of the vault as the martyrs' prison is given as a nineteenth-century identification rather than an established fact. Cyprian is listed among the saints connected to this place with an explicit note that ancient accounts put his execution elsewhere in Carthage. Sources: UNESCO List no. 37 (component naming and Criterion vi); the IVE pilgrimage itinerary to the holy places of Carthage for the martyr groups, the Delattre excavations and the 1903 inscription.
September 17, 2026
Photo credits
- Hero. Elena Tatiana Chis, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Source. CC BY-SA 4.0.