Carthage was the center of capital of the ancient Carthaginian civilization, on the eastern side of the Lake of Tunis in what is now the Tunis Governorate in Tunisia.

The city developed from a Phoenician colony into the capital of the empire dominating the Mediterranean during the first millennium BC.  The legendary Queen Dido is considered as the founder of the city, although her historicity has been questioned. According to accounts by Timaeus of Tauromenium, she purchased from a local tribe of the oxhide. Cutting the skin into strips, she was laid out out her claim and founded by empire that would become, through the Punic Wars, the only existential threat to the Roman Empire until the coming of the Vandals several centuries later.