NECROPOLIS AND CHRISTIAN CEMETERY
Christian cemetery built on the site of a necropolis to uncover sarcophagi and tombs dug into the rock.
Near the great basilica lie the remains of the surrounding wall, whose north-western corner is marked by the remains of one of the thirty-seven cylindrical towers that reinforced it. The vast western necropolis stretches across the wild vegetation. This is a Christian cemetery built on the site of a Punic necropolis, where numerous sarcophagi and rock-hewn tombs have been unearthed - not all of them Christian. A few metres further on, the circular mausoleum, some twenty metres in diameter, housed fourteen tombs. In the center was a large tomb, while the other sarcophagi were placed in the niches between the columns. A path through the vegetation leads to the remains of Bishop Alexander's chapel, built on rocky ground in the5th century to house the bodies of the "righteous antecedents", who were to be the city's first bishops. Their tombs are lined up at the eastern end of the chapel. Bishop Alexander's tomb would have been installed in a hemicycle on the opposite side. The crypt on the right contains the remains of eleven vaults. Mosaics hidden beneath the earth are still intact. One of them, found on a platform and bearing an inscription, was transferred to the Musée National des Antiquités et des Arts Islamiques in Algiers, where it is now on display.
Further down, a funerary enclosure contained the martyrs' vaults.
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