[1] Lying 369 km (229 mi) by road southwest of the country's capital, Tunis, Gafsa has its geographical coordinates 34°25′N 8°47′E / 34.417°N 8.783°E / 34.417; 8.783.

Excavations at prehistoric sites in the Gafsa area have yielded artefacts and skeletal remains associated with the Capsian culture.

It was captured by Gaius Marius in 106 BC and destroyed, later becoming reestablished under the Punic-style magistracy of sufetes before being granted the status of a Roman colonia.

The Berbers then occupied it, making it the capital of a Romano-Berber kingdom until subjected to Byzantium under Justinian I (527–565) and the era of Byzantine North Africa.

Historians such as Camps and Laverde consider Gafsa the place in North Africa where African Romance last survived, until the 13th century, as a spoken language.

The travel-book ‘Fountains in the Sand’ (1912) by British author Norman Douglas gives an in-depth account of life and work in Gafsa.

On 27 January 1980, a group of dissidents armed and trained by Libya occupied the city to contest the régime of Habib Bourguiba.

In 2008, Gafsa was the center of riots directed against the government of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

The government was swift and brutal in its suppression of the uprising, but this movement has since been credited with sowing the first seeds of the Jasmine Revolution that removed Zine El Abidine Ben Ali from power three years later, igniting the Arab Spring across much of North Africa and the Middle East.

[8] but a community may have lasted until the early 12th century[12] No longer a residential bishopric, Capsa is today listed by the Catholic Church as a titular see.

The Compagnie des phosphates de Gafsa had its own private railway line until 1966, on the basis of an agreement signed on 25 August 1896.