Byrsa

The overheated guidebooks about Tunisia call the Byrsa Hill the acropolis of Carthage.

I loved the spot, though. This was my favorite part of Tunisia. Spectacular blue sea and sky and ruins and black-green trees. You could see the Carthaginians feeling too powerful to be overrun as they looked down from this majestic place on their realm and how triumphant the chest-beating Romans had to have felt in the same spot.

The hill is dominated now by, of all things, a cathedral to St. Louis, the Crusader. It's a terrific museum now, but the structure is clearly a cathedral, so out of place in a country 98 percent Muslim.