The Implicit Threat of Being Designated a World Heritage Site

At the historic site of Carthage, in modern-day Tunisia, the municipality is bulldozing modern homes built on parts of the ancient city.

In mid-August this year, Layli Foroudi reported for the Thomson Reuters Foundation on the demolition of houses at the site of ancient Carthage, now a suburb of the Tunisian capital Tunis. In the past six years, 90 buildings have been demolished by the municipality — 10 of them in one day this past July. These demolitions have been concentrated in the Roman Circus, once a stadium for chariot races, now part of the poor neighborhood of Mohamed Ali.

The demolished homes were mostly built, it seems, in the chaos following the Tunisian Revolution of 2010–11. While the municipality considers the constructions illegal, the residents purchased their plots of land legally and in recent years the municipality has even approved electrical connections and provided running water.