Tharros spreads down the tip of Sardinia's Sinis peninsula toward the bay, a Phoenician colony from the eighth century BCE built beside an older nuragic village. It flourished under Carthage, and after the Roman conquest of 238 BCE gained baths, an aqueduct and a paved street network; its basalt main street is grooved by centuries of Punic and Roman traffic.
Two re-erected Corinthian columns from a temple mark the skyline between the Spanish tower of San Giovanni and the open sea, and beyond the necropolises the tophet, a Phoenician sanctuary where the ashes of children were buried, is the site's most somber corner. The city was abandoned around the year 1000. Combine it with the beach at San Giovanni di Sinis.
