In the centre stood the great rock of Byrsa, a flat topped eminence with almost perpendicular sides rising about two hundred feet above the surrounding plain.  This plateau formed the seat of the ancient Carthage, the Phoenician colony which Dido had founded.  It was now the acropolis of Carthage.  Here stood the temples of the chief deities of the town; here were immense magazines and storehouses capable of containing provisions for a prolonged siege for the fifty thousand men whom the place could contain.  The craggy sides of the rock were visible but in few places.  Massive fortifications rising from its foot to its summit defended every point where the rock was not absolutely perpendicular.  These walls were of enormous thickness, and in casemates or recesses in their thickness were the stables for the elephants, horses, and cattle of the garrison.

Round the upper edge of the rock extended another massive wall, above which in picturesque outline rose the temple and other public edifices.  At the foot of this natural citadel stretched the lower town, with its crowded population, its dense mass of houses, its temples and forum.  The style of architecture was peculiar to the city.  The Carthaginians abhorred straight lines, and all their buildings presented curves.  The rooms were for the most part circular, semicircular, or oval, and all exterior as well as interior angles were rounded off.  The material used in their construction was an artificial stone composed of pieces of rock cemented together with fine sand and lime, and as hard as natural conglomerate.  The houses were surmounted by domes or cupolas.  Their towers were always round, and throughout the city scarce an angle offended the eye of the populace.

Extending into the bay lay the isthmus, known as the Tana, some three miles in length, communicating with the mainland by a tongue of land a hundred yards wide.

This was the maritime quarter of Carthage; here were the extensive docks in which the vessels which bore the commerce of the city to and from the uttermost parts of the known world loaded and unloaded.  Here were the state dockyards where the great ships of war, which had so long made Carthage the mistress of the sea, were constructed and fitted out.  The whole line of the coast was deeply indented with bays, where rode at anchor the ships of the mercantile navy.  Broad inland lakes dotted the plain; while to the north of Byrsa, stretching down to the sea and extending as far as Cape Quamart, lay Megara, the aristocratic suburb of Carthage.

Here, standing in gardens and parks, were the mansions of the wealthy merchants and traders, the suburb presenting to the eye a mass of green foliage dotted thickly with white houses.  Megara was divided from the lower town by a strong and lofty wall, but lay within the outer wall which inclosed Byrsa and the whole of Carthage and stretched from sea to sea.