Basiliques chrétiennes d'Afrique du Nord. II. Inventaire des monuments de la Tunisie

Twenty-two years after the publication of the first volume of the inventory of Christian basilicas of North Africa, dedicated to monuments of Algeria (I. Gui, N. Duval, J.-P. Caillet, Inventaire de l’Algérie, I. Institut des études augustiniennes, Paris 1992), this new volume is devoted to Tunisia, a country rich in many early Christian churches and where research in this area is in constant progress : several buildings tht have been discovered and sometimes still unpublished, were integrated in the present book, which gathers monuments, churches and baptisteries, belonging to the ancient provinces of Praconsularis, of Byzacena and, for some, Tripolitania. Notices, ordered geographically, are designed on the model of those in the previous volume and gather essential information about each of them, alongside plans, some of which are published for the first time, as well as photographs. Sometimes very brief, when the buildings have disappeared without being described, they are however much more developed for particularly important examples. The ambition of this work, carried out with the support of the Institut national du patrimoine in Tunis, is not to present a new publication of monuments. It aims to bring together existing available data, material and literatures, to provide researchers with a useful tool that can be the starting point for further analysis on some sites, and summaries to the early christian architecture in Africa. But this volume also aspires to appeal to a broader audience than specialists, and pay tribute to the exceptional heritage of Tunisia in this field.