The remnants of the antique city of Hippo Regius, also known as Hippone, are amongst the most evocative in Algeria, stretched across a rolling site, full of flowers, rosemary, olive trees, birds and sheep, and overlooked by the imposing, colonial-era Basilica of Saint Augustine. You enter from what was the seafront, the water having receded several hundred metres over the millennia. There is a good plan of the site by the entrance.

It is worth climbing the small hill to the museum, before seeing the ruins. The ground floor contains a good collection of sculptures in the Salle des Bustes, including the Emperor Vespasian found in the forum.

The star piece of the museum, the distinctive 2.5-metre-high Trophy, is a bronze illustration of a post on which is hung a cape and military armour. On the wall is a very well mosaic of four Nereids. There are more mosaics across the hallway, the most remarkable being a third-century hunting scene, in which antelope, leopards and lion are chased into an ambush. Another mosaic, of a fishing scene, includes a view of third-century Hippo.