What to See in Tunis - Top Sights and Attractions

Museum of Tunisian heritage and Carthage. The Bardo National Museum is a museum of Tunis, Tunisia, located in the suburbs of Le Bardo.

It is one of the most important museums in the Mediterranean region and the second museum of the African continent after the Egyptian Museum of Cairo by richness of its collections. It traces the history of Tunisia over several millennia and across several civilizations through a wide variety of archaeological pieces.

Housed in an old beylical palace since 1888, it has been the setting for the exhibition of many major works discovered since the beginning of archaeological research in the country. Originally called Alaoui Museum (Arabic: المتحف العلوي, romanized: al-Matḥaf al-ʿAlawī), named after the reigning bey at the time, it takes its current name of Bardo Museum after the independence of the country even if the denomination is attested before that date.

The museum houses one of the largest collections of Roman mosaics in the world, thanks to excavations at the beginning of 20th century in various archaeological sites in the country including Carthage, Hadrumetum, Dougga and Utica. Generally, the mosaics of Bardo, such as the Virgil Mosaic, represent a unique source for research on everyday life in Roman Africa. From the Roman era, the museum also contains a rich collection of marble statues representing the deities and the Roman emperors found on different sites including those of Carthage and Thuburbo Majus.

The museum also houses pieces discovered during the excavations of Libyco-Punic sites including Carthage, although the National Museum of Carthage is the primary museum of the Carthage archaeological site. The essential pieces of this department are grimacing masks, terracotta statues and stelae of major interest for Semitic epigraphy, and the stele of the priest and the child. The museum also houses Greek works discovered especially in the excavations of the shipwreck of Mahdia, whose emblematic piece remains the bust of Aphrodite in marble, gnawed by the sea.

The Islamic Department contains, in addition to famous works such as the Blue Qur'an of Kairouan, a collection of ceramics from the Maghreb and Anatolia.

In order to increase the reception capacity and optimize the presentation of the collections, the museum is the subject of a vast operation which was to be completed initially in 2011 but was not finished until 2012 due to the Tunisian Revolution. The work concerns the increase of the exhibition surfaces by adding new buildings and redeploying the collections. The project aims to make the museum a major pole for a quality cultural development, so that the visitor can appreciate the artistic pieces deposited.

On March 18, 2015, an Islamist terrorist group attacked the museum and took tourists hostage in the building. The attack, which killed 22 people including 21 foreign tourists, was claimed by ISIS.^[1]

Thermal baths in Tunisia. The Baths of Antoninus or Baths of Carthage, located in Carthage, Tunisia, are the largest set of Roman thermae built on the African continent and one of three largest built in the Roman Empire. They are the largest outside mainland Italy. The baths are also the only remaining Thermae of Carthage that dates back to the Roman Empire's era. The baths were built during the reign of Roman Emperor Antoninus Pius.

The baths are at the South-East of the archaeological site, near the presidential Carthage Palace. The archaeological excavations started during the Second World War and concluded by the creation of an archaeological park for the monument. It is also one of the most important landmarks of Tunisia.

The baths are today part of the Archaeological site of Carthage on the list of World Heritage sites of UNESCO. On 17 February 2012, the Tunisian government proposed the Roman hydraulic complex Zaghouan-Carthage, that the baths are part of, as a future World Heritage site.^[3]

Mosque in Tunis, Tunisia. Al-Zaytuna Mosque, also known as Ez-Zitouna Mosque, and El-Zituna Mosque, is a major mosque at the center of the Medina of Tunis in Tunis, Tunisia.

The mosque is the oldest in the Capital of Tunisia and covers an area of 5,000 square metres (1.2 acres) with nine entrances. It has 160 authentic columns brought originally from the ruins of the old city of Carthage. The mosque is known to host one of the first and greatest universities in the history of Islam. Many Muslim scholars were graduated from the Al-Zaytuna for over a thousand years. From Ibn 'Arafa, one of the greatest scholars of Islam, Imam Maziri, the great traditionalist and jurist to the famous Tunisian poet Aboul-Qacem Echebbi and countless others all taught there.^[5]

Cathedral in Tunis, Tunisia. The Cathedral of St. Vincent de Paul is a Roman Catholic church located in Tunis, Tunisia. The cathedral is dedicated to Saint Vincent de Paul, patron saint of charity. It is the episcopal see of the Archdiocese of Tunis and is situated at Place de l'Indépendence in Ville Nouvelle, a crossroads between Avenue Habib Bourguiba and Avenue de France, opposite the French embassy.

The church, designed by L. Bonnet-Labranche, was built in a mixture of styles, including Moorish revival, Gothic revival, and Neo-Byzantine architectural traditions. The cornerstone was laid in 1890, and construction began in 1893. The church was opened on Christmas in 1897, albeit without its belltowers owing to a shortage of funds. The reinforced concrete towers were completed in 1910 using the Hennebique technique.

Cardinal Charles Lavigerie laid the first stone for a church on 7 November 1881, a little further down Avenue de la Marine (now Avenue Habib Bourguiba). This was a pro-cathedral; the cathedral of the archdiocese (then called Carthage) being the Saint Louis Cathedral. The pro-cathedral was built quickly, but its condition soon deteriorated due to the adverse ground conditions, necessitating the construction of the current cathedral.

Prior to independence, there were 255,000 Catholics in Tunisia in 1956. The number of Roman Catholics in Tunisia fell rapidly following Tunisian independence from France. A modus vivendi reached between the Republic of Tunisia and the Vatican in 1964 resulted in the transfer of selected buildings to the Tunisian state for public use, including the Acropolium of Carthage in Carthage. However, the Cathedral of St. Vincent de Paul remains under the ownership and operation of the Roman Catholic Church in Tunisia.^[6]

Library in Tunis, Tunisia. Dar Ben Achour is a palace in the medina of Tunis, built in the 17th century and located in the Pasha Street. Nowadays, it houses the library of the city of Tunis.

It was occupied by Sheikh Aziz Bouattour, the Grand Vizier of Tunis from 1882 to 1907 and grandfather of Muhammad al-Tahir ibn Ashur. He bequeathed the house to the latter before it returned to Mohamed Fadhel Ben Achour.

The house was acquired in 1970 by the municipality of Tunis. After a restoration, it is transformed in 1983 into a library whose mission is to collect and preserve historical documents related to the city of Tunis and Tunisians. In 1990, it also became the headquarters of the Tunisian Association of Monuments and Sites.^[11]