What to See in Sfax - Top Sights and Attractions

Bab El Kasbah is one of the gates of the Medina of Sfax, located in the west of its walls southern facade and gives access to its kasbah.^[1]

Sidi Amar Kammoun mosque is one of the most important and famous mosques of the medina of Sfax.^[2]

Mosque in Sfax, Tunisia. The Great Mosque of Sfax is the first mosque established in the historic city of Sfax, Tunisia. It dates back to the same year of the construction of the city wall which is in 849. It was built during the Aghlabid rule of Ifriqiya in the 9th-century which served as a vassal state of the Abbasid Caliphate. The mosque was specifically commissioned during the period of Imam Sahnoun, a Maliki jurist from Kairouan.^[3]

Historical landmark in Sfax, Tunisia. Bab Jebli is one of the gates of the medina of Sfax, located in the center of the northern facade of its walls between Bab Nahj El Bey and Bab Jebli Jedid. The gate gives access to a popular vegetables market and Sidi Bouchaicha Mosque inside the medina, and to a covered market in its outside.^[4]

Bab Gharbi or the Western Gate in Arabic is one of the gates of the medina of Sfax. It is located in middle of the western front of the medina fence, next to Cheikh Mansour Hajr Rabat. It opens on Picville neighborhood, through the 18th of January Avenue.

This gate was opened in 1936 (1355 Hejri) in order to decongest the medina and promote the exchange with the external areas. Sfax municipality restored it in 1960 and built a new entrance directed to the north just next to the old one which is directed to the west.^[5]

Mosque. Driba Mosque or old Sidi Lakhmi Mosque is one of the mosques of the medina of Sfax.^[6]

Kasbah of Sfax is a kasbah, an Islamic desert fortress, located in the southwestern corner of the ancient city of Sfax. It was used for a different purposes throughout the history, first a control tower built by the Aghlabids on the coast, then the seat of the municipal government, and then the main army barracks. Its construction was preceded by the deployment of the wall and the medina quarter. Today it is served as a museum of traditional architecture.^[7]

Bab Charki or the Eastern Gate in Arabic is one of the gates of the medina of Sfax. This gate is located in the middle of the eastern front of the medina fence, just in front of Oran Park and the Tunisian Railways locals through the Army Boulevard.

From the inside, it gives access, by a staircase, to Driba Street which represents the east-west median axis of the medina.

The door has the shape of a semicircular arch and represents the eastern end of the median east-west axis that divides the medina longitudinally.

This gate, opened on March 1965, is the last opening that was done in order to decongest the medina and promote the exchange with the external areas.^[8]

Taparura was an ancient Berber, Punic and Roman city in the location of modern-day Sfax, Tunisia. It was a former Catholic diocese.

The same ancient name was revived in the 1980s as a coastal urban development project on the location of former chemical industries.^[9]

Souk El Hout, or the Fish Market, is one of the most popular markets in the medina of Sfax because of all of the different kinds of fish that can be bought there.^[10]

Mausoleum. Sidi Amar Kammoun mausoleum is one of the most important mausoleums of the medina of Sfax.^[11]