Tunisia Tours

With one foot in the Mediterranean and another in the Sahara, Tunisia’s cultural heritage is inextricably bound with both southern Europe and the Maghreb. Walk the streets of Tunis and not only will you admire the wide, ram rod straight Avenue du Bourgiba with its Hausman style architecture, whimsical volutes and curlicued balconies but also, in stark contrast, the fortified and tangled labyrinth of the mini city of the medina where people have lived, worked and traded since the Middle Ages. Look more closely and you see the remnants of an ancient empire in the Roman columns which decorate the Zitouna mosque and travel a little further into the suburbs and you are amongst the ruins of not one but two of the most powerful and richest ancient cultures of the Mediterranean region.

As the Phoenician cities of Tyre, Byblos and Sidon became absorbed by the Assyrian and Persian Empires, Carthage became the ‘new capital’ of the West, at the head of its own trading empire. This fabled kingdom of Dido and her faithless lover Aeneas was the power that Rome sought to emulate and finally destroy in the third Punic War. After a two-year siege, Scipio Aemilianus set the city alight, and for several days his death squads ranged the streets clearing the city of those who had survived the blaze. When the city finally surrendered in 146BC, its centre was levelled, and thousands of citizens went into slavery. Carthage would not rise again. Yet even the Romans could not entirely eradicate Carthage from history. High on the Byrsa Hill, now a wealthy suburb of Tunis with sweeping views out to sea, you find a tiny section of what once was – the ruins of Punic houses, parts of the street network and the necropolis. One block of Punic shops and houses has been excavated on the south side of Byrsa hill and this provides a good impression of what the city must have looked like. Most of the buildings were of sundried brick and stone, walls were faced with plaster, and floors decorated with simple mosaics or coloured cement. The shops opened onto the street, with access to the first-floor living-quarters via a small court. Beneath each building was a deep plaster-lined cistern, for rainwater collection.

Down on the shoreline, amongst the whitewashed and bougainvillea strewn villas of the Tunis well-to-do, the remains and outline of the Cothon, the ingenious circular port and dry dock, can clearly be seen. In this quiet spot where few tourists venture, you can see the remains of the slipways discovered by British archaeologists in 1980, and remnants of the dry dock facilities which once accommodated 220 vessels. And just a short stroll away is the Tophet of Salammbo, the sinister Sanctuary of Tanit, the patron goddess of Carthage. The site contained thousands of cinerary urns, some with dedicatory formulae showing that that these remains were the first-born children of distinguished Carthaginian families, aged between two and three. The Tanit symbol occurs everywhere. Carthage was reborn a century later when in 46 BCE Julius Caesar instigated a rebuilding project. Much excavation and restoration was undertaken in the late 20th century as part of the UNESCO ‘Save Carthage’ campaign, but great quantities of Roman building material had long since been removed from the site. Many mosques and palaces in North Africa and Spain, including the Alhambra in Granada, were built from bits of Roman Carthage, while many of the best statues and mosaics now reside in museum collections, such as the Bardo and the Louvre. Despite this everywhere there are remnants of Rome: villas, temples, baths, theatres, cisterns and arenas.

The Baths of Antoninus are the grandest of the remaining monuments. Begun by Hadrian in AD 112, and developed by Antoninus Pius in AD 146, this huge bath complex, one of the largest outside Rome itself, is spread over nine acres running to the edge of the sea, a piece of prime land thankfully saved from modern developers. A huge granite column, one of eight that originally supported the roof, has been re-erected, and at nearly 60 feet to the top of its immense Corinthian capital, provides visitors with some idea of the original height of the vaulting. Whilst the upper storeys have now gone, you can wander among what was once the elaborate heating system where water was stored and channelled from cisterns to heat the pools. Carrying water to the baths and beyond was the impressive Zaghouan Aqueduct which starts in the Djebel Zaghouan mountain range, 40 miles north of Carthage. The enormous cisterns which it kept supplied can be found on the north side of Tunis. Fallen into disrepair and used as makeshift stables until the 20th century, the cisterns are now cleared and in part restored so it is possible to explore one of the open sections and admire this impressive example of Roman engineering. On the Odeon Hill at the Park of the Roman villas, we catch a glimpse of the life of the privileged. This flower filled, peaceful site contains several villas in ruinous state dating from the 2nd century AD but the House of the Aviary, named for its beautiful mosaic, has been restored. With its pink marble columns, and attractive courtyard and garden with fabulous views over the sea, it is not hard to imagine the lifestyle of the wealthy here. And whilst the amphitheatre at El Djem, one of the largest and best preserved in the Roman Empire, is justifiably the most famous in Tunisia, in the capital we find the remains of the Carthage amphitheatre with its capacity for 30,000 spectators. It was here that Perpetua and Felicity were martyred in 203 AD, refusing to renounce their Christian faith. The remains of a chapel in the centre of the arena, built during the 19th century by the White Fathers, are a poignant reminder of the sufferings of the Christian martyrs.

After the fall of the Empire, Carthage was destroyed for a second time when Tunis became the capital city of the Arab Aghlabid dynasty in 698 BCE. The oldest parts of the medina date to this period but it was during the control of the Almohad and Hafsid dynasties (12th-16th centuries) that it really flourished and became one of the richest and grandest centres of commerce in the Islamic world. The medina is usually entered through the sea gate, the Bab el Bahr, which, bereft of its supporting walls, takes on the semblance of a triumphal arch. As you enter the maze of shaded alleyways, the city is compacted and concentrated to a high degree. Streets close in, houses sit tight with shops an Alladin caves of leather goods, brightly patterned ceramics and embroidered djellaba, and tiny workshops no bigger than cupboards where chechia are made and cobblers repair shoes. Everywhere there is noise, the buzz of mopeds, the clink of hammers and the shouts of vendors. To the north and south of the Zitouna Mosque are the covered vaulted souqs– the Souq des Étoffes ( fabric), Souq El Berka (jewellery), and Souq de la Laine (wool) and at the junction between Rue Sidi Ben Arous and the Rue le Kasbah, you find the Souk des Chechias where the traditional Tunisian head gear is still made (not to be confused with the Fez beloved by Tommy Cooper, the chechia is a more dignified affair without a tassel). In the 17th century, one million chechias were produced here annually. Approximately 20,000 permanent people reside in the medina, primarily in the El Hafsia and Tourbet El Bey districts. Here you will find mosques and mausoleums dating to the Ottoman period as well as local hammams and some of the wonderful wooden doors of the medina, painted yellow, green and blue, and decorated with metal studs. Deeper in, you find the quieter streets where life goes on much as it has for a thousand years.