In our previous blog we explored the area South of Sousse like the amphitheater of El Jem, the ancient city of Mahdia, and Monastir, a popular wintering hole for cruisers. Today we continue North towards Tunis and we decided to drive via Marina Yasmine Hammamet some 10 km South of Hammamet city.
Little did we know that Yasmine Hammamet (B in the map below) is a resort town, built solely for tourism, and we were in for some surprises.
The Golden Tower of Medina Mediterranea is a modified replica of the Torre del Oro in Seville, that was erected by the Almohad Caliphate in early 13th century when the Almohads ruled the Magreb and Southern Spain.
BebEddiwan is based on the seaside entrance gate of Sfax, Tunisia’s second largest city and founded by the Aghlabides in the 9th century.
One of the attractions in the resort is the “Palace of the 1001 nights”, a salute to the imagination, fantasy and mystery of the Magreb, which had the Europeans dream for long.
In the 19th century the mystique of the Magreb attracted many European painters looking for new inspiration. Their paintings included especially harem scenes, presenting languid and lustful women, masculine hunting scenes, or descriptions of typical desert landscapes, oasis or medinas, and rural scenes.
In the “Palace” you will find life size displays of paintings from those “Masters of the Magreb”.
The faded photo of Rudolf Ernst’s painting “A Moorish Interior”. Why not a decent, clear photo if you want it to be attractive to tourists? The life size replica is childishly simple. Walt Disney does a better job.
The display of the painting “Après le bain”, by Paul Louis Bouchard is more palatable.
“Le diseur de bonne aventure”, an aquarelle by Ettore Simonetti. The photo was hardly recognisable. The display was OK. In all there are 35 displays (and we are showing the better one’s!).
Frits was invited for coffee by a mysterious lovely lady and received a royal treatment. The receptionist of the palace was a resourceful photographer and he made a few lovely shots.
In the 1st century, there was a settlement here known as Pupput that became a Roman colony in the 2nd century. In the 9th century the Umayyads built the Kasbah (The Borj) and the medina started to develop below its walls. In the 13th century, walls around the medina were built. In the 16th century the city was caught up in the power struggle between the Ottomans and the Spanish. In World War II, it became one of the headquarters of the Nazi general Erwin Rommel.
To our surprise, the waiter spoke fluent Dutch and we had some interesting conversation with him. He is in Tunisia during the colder period of the year during tourist season to help his family out with the restaurant. In the summer months he is in Puerto Banus, Spain, during the tourist season there, helping his friends out with their restaurant. His actual residence is in Amsterdam and he loved the alcohol and pot (wiet or poke salad) being feely available and of course the social benefits he received over there.
Good example of a guy navigating live maximising joy with the least amount of effort. We received a few drinks from the house and had an excellent evening.
The latest round of violence between Israel and Palestine began after the Palestinian Hamas launched an attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. Israel responded with an intense counteroffensive that included an order to carry out a “complete siege” of Gaza.
It turned out that co-ordinated protest broke out in several Tunisian cities, also in Tunis, a bit further East from our Hotel Carlton. Several thousand protesters rallied outside the French embassy, condemning Western support for Israel which they blamed for a deadly strike on a Gaza hospital.
Protesters sitting on the stairs of the Municipal Theater adjacent to the embassy on Place de l’Indépendance.
We are going to visit the Bardo National Museum, arguably the second most important museum in Africa after the Egyptian museum in Cairo. The museum is housed in a former Palace. The construction of the first buildings started somewhere around 1230 by the Muslims that were expelled from Andalusia after the reconquista. Several dynasties and rulers added to – altered and fortified the structures, which gradually became a Kasbah. Ahmed Bey came to the throne in 1837 and he yearned for something grander, something like Versailles.
Mohammedia, fifty kilometres further south, (see earlier posts) provided a copy on a smaller scale so he abandoned the Bardo and established himself in his own version of Versailles.
The palace was transformed into a museum in 1888. The museum underwent a vast reorganisation and restoration in 2012 and again 10 years later. It had just been reopened when we visited.
You enter the museum via “the small palace”, pictured above (click thumbnails). This suite of rooms was built by Hussein II Bey (1824 – 1835).
It shows the dimensions and the decor of a typical 19th century mansion of the Tunis medina. The main room uses the conventional “T” shape patten of the lounges of these mansions, with its central courtyard.
The main reason to visit Tunis was to catch a glimpse of Ancient Carthage. Founded by the Phoenicians in the ninth century BC, Carthage reached its height in the fourth century BC as the centre of the Carthaginian Empire, a major power led by the Punic people who dominated the ancient western and central Mediterranean Sea. Following the Punic Wars, Carthage was destroyed by the Romans in 149 BC, who rebuilt the city 100 years later.
Click on the image below for some real ancient Carthaginian artefacts.
Not surprisingly the museum has a large Roman collection. Again, mainly mosaics. We have seen so many already so we show only a few.
Byrsa Hill was the citadel of Punic Carthage. In the 5th century BCE, the Carthaginians built workshops here, which later gave way to houses.
After the destruction of Carthage in 149 BC, the hill remained unoccupied. 100 Years later, during the reign of Roman Emperor Augustus the summit of the hill was levelled off for the construction of Roman Carthage. It destroyed the Punic remains, which included a temple of Eshmun, the Punic God of healing.
Today, a small excavated area containing the foundations of Punic houses can be seen here.
During the Roman Era, Byrsa Hill was the starting-point of the two main roads of Roman Carthage: the decumanus, running from east to west, and the cardo, from north to south (pink line in photo above).
(A) on overview photo. The Hannibal district (200 -146 B.C.). This housing district was built in the early second century B.C., on a plot previously used by metal workshops. Besides the houses, the “Hannibal” neighbourhood included shops opening onto the street: mills, figurines shops, jewellery shops etc.
(C) on overview photo. In the encircled location a tomb with the remains of a man called the “Young Man of Byrsa” was discovered in 1994. Punic inscriptions called him Arish “the beloved one.” DNA tests revealed that Ariche’s genetic make-up closely matches that of a modern day individual from Portugal. This indicates that not only merchandise was transported to the melting pot of Carthage via Phoenician and Punic trade networks.
To the left are the remains of the palace of Gaiseric, king of the Vandals who played a key role in the decline of the Western Roman Empire during the 5th century.
In the background the Cathedral of Saint Louis.
From Byrsa Hill you can see the old Punic harbour in the distance with its two interconnected basins. The commercial harbor was in the shape of a rectangle measuring 456 meters by 356 meters, linked to the sea by a channel 20 meters wide.
The circular naval harbour, that once harboured the mightiest fleet in the Mediterranean, was surrounded by a high wall and had a diameter of 325 meters. A channel giving it direct access to the sea was constructed only during the Third Punic War. The naval harbour alone had moorings for some 220 vessels, both along the landward side and around the inner island.
The ruins of ancient civilisation we saw in Greece and in Turkiye are in better shape than what we saw here. Many of the ruined ancient cities in Greece and Turkiye, destroyed by war or major earthquakes, were abandoned. So there is material available for the restoration of monuments. Byrsa Hill however has always been inhabited by subsequent civilisations that “recycled” construction materials. Many structures in modern day Tunis have used ancient materials as well, so there is not much left. Despite this, it was very satisfying to have been on the grounds of the first major empire in the Mediterranean.
The following morning we strolled through the medina before driving back to the boat in Bizerte. You can click the thumbnails.
On Oct 29 we left Tunisia for Mallorca in what would be, as expected, a challenging sail. Our plan is still to make it to the Canary Island before the end of the years so we can cross the Atlantic, but will we make it on time?
Thank you for reading our travel stories.
Liza and Frits.