Banasa

Banasa , whose significance remains still dubious, is in the plain of Gharb, on left bank of the Sebou Wadi. Several centuries before the Emperor Auguste did not decide, at the beginning of the 1st century of the Christian era, the foundation of colony JULIA VANTIA BANASA, the site had known a strong Carthaginian phenician presence then. This presence appeared in particular through a flourishing craft industry, as the many furnaces testify some to potters which were released. It is probable that at the beginning of the Roman occupation, Banasa was only one military camp surrounded by a ditch. But well quickly contours of the city started to take shape. The streets with right angles appear, as well as a forum bordered of gantries, a legal basilica, a temple with six collae , and a half-dozen of thermal baths including two privés.
The number of these thermal baths can appear besides surprising when it is known that the population of the city was to hardly exceed the three thousand inhabitants. The explanation of this apparent disproportion probably lies in the fact that this infrastructure was also designed to face the multitude of the rural populations the days of marché.
The Sebou wadi seems to have played a big role in the urban evolution of the city. The absence of stone quarries in Gharb imposed the recourse to the barges for the routing of the dune sandstone of the Atlantic coast and the gray limestone monoliths of the careers of Zerhoun.
Banasa was built on a site which dominates a particularly fertile plain. Many inscriptions, and in particular of the military diplomas engraved on bronze, attest that the first owners of the grounds were veterans who, once their finished military service, had taken their retirement on the spot.
Banasitaies, tradesmen for the majority, had a taste pronounced for the things of Article the thermal baths like certain houses, are paved mosaics with the geometrical, figurative and mythological drawings (crosses - gammées, Maltese cross, Gordian knots, braids, fish…). A mosaic - that one unfortunately could not save - represents EROS and PSYCHE. A triton, surrounded by a fish multitude is represented in the mosaic of the “thermal baths to the frescos”. Many steles carry the traces of feet of statues : Isis, Minerve, and even of ordinary persons. An incredible quantity of bronze statuettes, movable objects also out of bronze, toilet requisites in bone, coins (out of bronze, money and gold), gold jewels (earrings, pendentive, rings), collars out of bronze or glass shots and even fines make collection of objets d'art, put at the day with Banasa, one of most important of all Africa of Nord.
Three centuries during, the life thus peacefully will run out in Banasa. But at the end of the 3rd century, Rome, threatened on all its borders of Europe and Asia, had to fold up its effectifs.
It seems that at the time of this fold, all the population evacuated the city. There does not remain indeed any vestige of habitat dating from the 4th century of the Christian era. Consequently, Banasa had ceased existing as an urban center, and, slowly but unrelentingly the houses and the monuments fell in ruin.

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