Museum

The Museum is to the left on entering the site and, as ever, is best visited before the ruins. At quiet times, it is kept locked, but will be opened if you ask at the entrance to the site. Outside the museum building there are some of the many tombstones and other funerary sculptures, the outer walls lined with mosaics salvaged from the site, the covered court housing busts of the emperor Septimus Severus and his wife, Julia Domna.

The mosaics, which line most of the interior walls, are more impressive. Among the treasures here are a mosaic showing a hunting scene, the 10m long so-called Mosaic of the Donkey, which shows a huge range of local animals, and the inscription of Bishop Cressonius, a statement of faith lifted from the floor of the South Basilica. The masterpiece - one of the greatest North African mosaics - is the Legend of Dionysos, brought from the House of Bacchus and now in the third hall. The mosaic shows four scenes in the legend of Dionysos: being nursed by the nymph Nysa; being carried on a tiger; an offering made at a cult festival in winter; and an initiation scene during which a woman turns her head from a phallus. The mosaic's central panel shows another scene from the Dionysos myth in which the nymph Ambrosia is murdered by King Lycurgus. The design and execution suggest the level of sophistication achieved in ancient Djemila. Also in this last room is a 4th-5th century mosaic of men on foot and horse, hunting lion, boar and panther - note the kneeling hunter levelling his spear at a leaping lion. In the cabinets, a range of objects found at the site, including medical instruments, door locks, jewellery and pottery objects, help to give an idea of how life was lived. Also worth taking in here is the scale model of the ruins, which gives a useful overview of what is to come.