This vibrant capital has some dazzling sights

Seven wonders within Tunis, Tunisia

Flush with incredible protected ruins, bustling souks and beautiful coastal villages, this vibrant North African capital has a rich and turbulent history that’s not always immediately on show.

1. A day on the tiles

Roman mosaics at the Bardo National Museum.Credit: Alamy

The dazzling jewel in the crown, or perhaps the magnificent mosaic on the walls, of tourism in Tunis, is the capital’s cherished Bardo National Museum. Being the repository of the world’s largest collection of ancient Roman mosaics, all unearthed around Tunisia itself, not visiting the Bardo when in Tunis is akin to skipping the Louvre in Paris. Art experts concur that North African Roman mosaics, such as those on display within the Bardo, are more colourful than their Italian equivalents due to the vibrancy of the Tunisian marble and limestone from which they were directly crafted.

2. Take me to the Kasbah Square

The Kasbah square.Credit: Alamy

It’d be easy to stroll across Tunis’ vast Kasbah Square, dominated by a soaring, flag-festooned contemporary monument, oblivious to the fact that it was one of the key sights of the Tunisian Arab Spring protests from 2010. Certainly, your tour guide is unlikely to volunteer such still sensitive information, nor the fact, that the sequence of volatile anti-government uprisings across the Arab world began here in Tunisia. It was triggered when a young market trader self-immolated after claiming to have been assaulted by a police officer.

3. How perfectly bazaar

Directly across from Kasbah Square, plunge into the frenetic Grand Souk des Chechias, part of the maze-like World Heritage-listed medina, or old town, above which the minaret of the Moorish Al-Zaytuna Mosque soars. Unlike certain other souks in the Arab world, the traders of the myriad shops and stalls here tend not to harass tourists as they appear to enjoy sufficient commerce from local Tunis citizenry, something which adds to the souk’s pleasing authenticity. Don’t believe anyone who tells you that you can’t get lost inside this wondrous labyrinth, which dates to the 17th century.

4. Lifting the lids

The red fez and a merchant at the Grand Souk.Credit: Alamy

Inside Grand Souk, look out for the remaining male milliners of Tunisia’s equivalent of the fez hat derived elsewhere in the Maghreb region of Africa. Tunisia’s traditional blood-red felt versions have been made and sold in this particular souk for centuries. Once thousands of craftsmen fashioned a million hats per year, but numbers have dwindled to a dozen or so. Both they and their salons are among the most photogenic among all the traders.

5. Lose yourself in a lost world

An archaeological site presides over modern-day Carthage.Credit: Getty Images

Founded in 814 BC by the Phoenicians, modern-day Carthage is an attractive and affluent municipality of Tunis, interspersed with an archaeological site atop a commanding hill overlooking the Gulf of Tunis. Once a mighty commercial empire, Carthage was destroyed by the Roman Empire in AD 146, with the town rebuilt by the Romans on the ruins of the ancient city and in and around which visitors centuries later can now wander.

6. Soak up Roman bath ruins

Baths of Carthage.Credit: iStock

Down the hill, the seaside-set World Heritage-listed Baths of Antoninus, or Baths of Carthage, represent the largest set of Roman thermae built in Africa and one of the largest of the Roman Empire. The extensive ruins of the ground level of the original baths allow visitors to wander the eerie bowels of the complex where hapless slaves once stoked the furnaces which warmed the therapeutic waters for their indulgent Roman charges above.

7. Feeling blue and white, too

Local colours – a street in the Arab city of Sidi Bou Said.Credit: iStock

The blue and white-daubed houses and meandering cobbled streets of Sidi Bou Said, a Mediterranean coastal cliffside village only 20 minutes from central Tunis, are reminiscent of those in Morocco. But don’t be too fooled – Sidi Bou Said is something of a contrivance as its vivid colour scheme dates only to the early 20th century when expatriate French painter and musicologist Baron Rodolphe d’Erlanger suggested the village could benefit from a lick of paint. Nonetheless, this colourful village, replete with al fresco, Bougainvillaea-draped restaurants, cafes and galleries, provides a delightful, if sometimes crowded, interlude from a sometimes austere Tunis.

The writer visited Tunis on a shore excursion as part of Viking’s 16-day “Malta, Morocco & the Mediterranean” cruise. Fares from $11,495 a person with November 13, 23 and 28 and December 8 departures this year still available at the time of writing. See vikingcruises.com.au