Chemtou or Chimtou was an ancient Roman-Berber town in northwestern Tunisia, located 20 km from the city of Jendouba near the Algerian frontier.

With Chemtou's ruins dating from over a period of 1,500 years, the site covers over 80 hectares of area pending further excavations.

The excavated ruins are typical of Roman cities with temples, baths, an aqueduct, an amphitheatre, and housing for quarry workers whose number may exceed a thousand.

The testimonies of the long history of the settlement of Chimtous have been partly preserved on the rocky ridges and on their southern, western and northern slopes.

His father Massinissa, who had been an Allied Roman since the Second Punic War, had seized power over the upper Medjerda valley in 152 BC.

The fragments of the building decoration are among the most valuable examples of the very rarely preserved Numidian royal architecture and can be visited today in the Chimtou Museum to reconstruct the sanctuary.

In the 4th century AD it was finally replaced by a small, three-aisled church, using the quader and architectural parts of the destroyed sanctuary.

They are sculpted out of the rock in the southwest, west, and north of the Temple Mount, heavily weathered and visible only with oblique incident light.

In the swampland of the highly meandering river, the difficult foundations and the recurring floods made the construction a risky undertaking.

The material used for the cuboids was green limestone from Bordj Helal, gray marble /limestone from Ain El Ksir and yellow stone blocks of unknown origin About a century after the inauguration of the bridge, a grain mill was installed on the left bank of the river.

[7][8] In the huge warehouse area, there was a cemetery for the campers (the urban necropolis was located on the southern slope of the Djebel Chemtou), which housed stalls, workshops, bathhouses, sanctuaries, water distributors and, just in front of the 300-meter-long south wall.

Although the work camp was so hermetically separated from the city, it took advantage of it: chiefs of the quarries donated the town public buildings, but not of marble blocks, which were too expensive and destined for export.

In the fourth century the warehouses were systematically plundered for building material and finally the camp was completely planned.

[10] As in every Roman city, there was an urban aqueduct in Simitthus, from which public and private baths, drinking water fountains, and vatoes[check spelling] were fed.

In the quarrying plant, in the working camp and in the Fabrica it was used for sawing, grinding, and forging of tools, and as drinking water for the workers.

[6][11] Therefore, Simitthus had an unusually complex aqueduct: the water was transported to the city over a distance of over 30 kilometers with bridges, piers and underground canals.

This is a huge domed seven-aisled water storage and distribution system with large window openings for ventilation.