History of The Museum
The museum was founded in 1875 by Cardinal Charles Martial Lavigerie in the premises of the monastery; its name until 1956 was the Museum Lavigerie.
The museum is the product of excavations conducted by European archaeologists, in particular those made by Alfred Louis Delattre. The Annex was used at first to house the items found in searches in the necropolis of Carthage and excavations of the St. Louis hill but also Douimès, the hill of Juno, the Sainte-Monique Hill and also the Carthaginian Christian basilicas. However, many object unearthed were sold to tourists when the museum had a number of examples of similar objects.
The museum received its present name in 1956 and opened for the first time as a national museum in 1963. It has undergone extensive restructuring in the 1990s, and has now been redesigned to accommodate new discoveries on the site of Carthage, especially the product of searches conducted as part of the international campaign of the UNESCO, from 1972-1995.
Read more about this topic: Carthage National Museum
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