Tunis Medina
Seven hundred monuments in a seventh-century labyrinth, with the Zitouna Mosque at its heart.
Duration
2 hrs 30 min – 4 hrs
Best time
Weekday mornings
Open
Every day
Entry price
Free
The medina was founded in the seventh century around the Zitouna mosque and holds around seven hundred listed monuments — palaces, madrasas, mausoleums, fondouks — in a tangle of lanes whose plan has not changed.
Its organisation is legible once you know it: the clean and noble trades closest to the mosque — perfumers, booksellers, cloth merchants — and the dirty or noisy ones pushed towards the gates: tanners, blacksmiths, dyers. The Souk des Chéchias, where the red felt caps are made, has existed since the fifteenth century.
Getting there
Enter by the Porte de France, at the end of Avenue Habib Bourguiba. Light rail to République, then ten minutes on foot.
Rules on site
Non-Muslims may only enter the Zitouna mosque's courtyard, at limited hours. Touts offer to take you to a terrace 'with the best view' that always ends at a carpet shop: decline at the first sentence.