Lixus

Lixus is an ancient Phoenician and Roman city on a hill above the Loukkos river, a few kilometres from Larache in northern Morocco. It is among the oldest urban sites in the country. Ancient authors, including Pliny the Elder, linked it to the myth of Hercules and the garden of the Hesperides, and the Phoenicians are thought to have settled it from around the 7th century BCE. It later became a prosperous port of the Mauretanian kingdom and, after Rome annexed the region under the emperor Claudius in the 1st century CE, a Roman colony within Mauretania Tingitana. Its wealth rested largely on fish salting and garum, and the site holds one of the largest groups of salting vats in the Roman world, with dozens of basins near the foot of the hill. The excavated remains include a small Roman theatre and amphitheatre, baths with mosaics (including a well-known mosaic head of the sea god Oceanus), temples, and the walled acropolis with its Phoenician and Roman layers. The city declined in late antiquity, but was reoccupied in the early Islamic period before being abandoned. Systematic excavation took place in the 20th century, led by Spanish archaeologists in the protectorate years and followed by Moroccan and international teams. Preservation is uneven: the salting vats and theatre are legible, while some walls and mosaics have eroded or been moved to the Tetouan Archaeological Museum. The site is reached by a path up the hill, with views over the river estuary, and a guardian typically opens it in daylight hours.