The geographical conformation of the area is among those that the Phoenicians prefer as their settlement choices in the West, it's characterized by the costruction of the city in the heart of island on high hills. The Phoenician settlement is traditionally located in the area subsequently occupied by the Roman forum: on one side the anonymous sanctuary erected close to the slopes of the Coltellazzo, on the other side is another equally anonymous sanctuary, which used to surmounted the small hill on the south. The famous stele inscribed by Nora, together with other fragments, record a Phoenician presence organized in the site perhaps as early as the last decades of the ninth century BC.C. In later historical periods the settlement was occupied by the Carthaginians. Precisely in this period, which goes between the end of the III and the whole VI century a.C., a third temple was built on the tip of Su Coloru and the monumentalization of two cult areas outside the town: the necropolis and the tofet.