To the origins
The haouanet, dating from the Bronze Age, are the oldest structures in Tunisia. They are small cubic burial chambers dug into the rock, examples of which can be seen in the village of Chaouach. Great masters of urban planning, Phoenicians and Carthaginians developed, them, large cities organized according to plans with broad avenues intersecting at right angles. Stucco, ceramics, and soils mixing brick cement and marble and shell fragments are found in the residences arranged around a patio, which is accessed from the entrance by a bent corridor allowing to preserve the intimacy. Kerkouane shelters the most beautiful Punic urban vestiges. It is also from this period that the powerful ramparts and defensive ditches of the city of Carthage date. From a stylistic point of view, there is a surprising mixture of Egyptian influences (sculpted and painted cornice called "Egyptian throat", pyramidion, massive volumes), Greek (Ionic and Doric columns) and Punic (art of mosaic and decoration). The mausoleum of Dougga is a beautiful example. The fortress of the Numidian kings of Makthar testifies to the diversity of the ritual structures of the time. Dolmen and tombs with multiple chambers rub shoulders with the tophets, sacred areas dedicated to Baal and Tanit. To the Punic succeed the Romans. After destroying it, they rebuilt Carthage according to a checkerboard plan that was to be used in all the cities of the province, which the Romans modernized with the help of powerful infrastructures. Kilometers of roads, bridges and above all impressive aqueducts appeared, including that of Zaghouan which measured nearly 125km. These aqueducts supplied the cisterns, as well as the fountains and basins of the domestic patios and of course the thermal baths. Pragmatic, the Romans did not appreciate the monumentality and ostentation of an architecture which had to underline their power. Temples and capitols multiplied, as did theaters and coliseums. Among the sites not to be missed: the gigantic coliseum of El Jem, the great baths of Bulla Regia, Dougga and Makthar or the superb three capitoline temples of the city of Sbeïtla. A power glorified also by the construction of powerful triumphal arches leading to sumptuous forums surrounded by porticoes, like the one in the new Carthage. The Roman prosperity is finally read in the rich patrician residences with paintings and polychrome mosaics. In Bulla Regia, many wealthy Romans doubled their living space by converting the basements to create a second, cooler home to endure the summer months! The Roman period also saw the development of paleochristian architecture. The catacombs of Sousse, as well as the vaulted chapel, the rotunda and the church of the Damous el Karita site in Carthage are the great representatives of it. Passed under the control of Byzantium which adopts definitively the Christian faith, Tunisia is equipped with beautiful churches taking again a basilical plan with three naves and being decorated with sumptuous mosaics. The Byzantines also excelled in the art of fortifications as shown by the powerful fortress of Kélibia and the massive citadel of Haïdra
Splendors of Islam
The first witnesses of Islamic architecture in Tunisia are a surprising mixture of military and religious architecture, like the ribats, real citadels of faith, which can be spotted by their massive and crenellated silhouette and their watchtower called nador. The most impressive are to be seen in Sousse and Monastir. The first mosques, often made from materials from Roman and Byzantine buildings, also take on the appearance of fortresses, like the Great Mosque of Kairouan, whose powerful minaret, designed on the model of Mediterranean watchtowers, cannot be missed. The latter, with its porticoed courtyard and its T-shaped plan topped by a dome, will inspire many other mosques such as those of Tunis and Mahdia. These large mosques are in the heart of the medina, itself protected by imposing ramparts dominated by powerful kasbahs or fortified citadels, as can be seen in Sousse or Sfax whose ramparts date back to the ninth century. It is in the heart of this labyrinth of narrow streets, that the jewels of Islam are discovered. The souks, bubbling markets sometimes sheltered by a barrel vault, rub shoulders with the medersas and zaouïas, religious teaching establishments, as well as the caravanserais welcoming merchants and travelers, the hammams and the dars or town houses. The latter are entirely designed according to a principle of respect for privacy. The exterior façade has no or few openings, except for a massive door and a portal whose decoration reflects the social status of the owner. The few existing openings are always protected by elegant moucharabiehs. Inside, the house is organized around a central courtyard as shown very well by the beautiful Dar Al Jaziri in the medina of Tunis, itself a Unesco World Heritage Site. In terms of style, the austerity of the first buildings gradually gave way to a decorative effervescence, especially between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, when Tunisia became the refuge of Andalusian artists and craftsmen, who left their mark made of twirling arabesques, intertwined arches and coffered ceilings decorated with muqarnas or stalactites. Under the Ottoman regency, the architecture of Islam will know new developments. The mosques multiply the tiers of domes that we see rising towards the sky, just like the minarets which are now octagonal, more slender and often topped by a pyramidal lantern. The mosques also have tourbets, mausoleums richly decorated, overhung by a dome, and entirely dedicated to the memory of a sovereign. Tunis is home to superb examples of this Ottoman architecture: the Mohamed Bey mosque with its high silhouette, its white domes and its sumptuous marble, sculpted plaster and ceramic coverings or the Youssef Dey mosque with its mausoleum topped by a pyramidal roof covered with glazed tiles and coated with a superb marble polychromy. The Ottoman period is also the one of the renewal of the cities with the multiplication of fondouks - serving at the same time as warehouses and inns -, medersas, barracks and especially sumptuous urban palaces, gradually abandoning the local influences to turn to the French or Italian influences, in particular under the dynasty of Husseinites. Not to be missed: the ruins of the Palace of La Mohamedia, imagined as a Tunisian Versailles, the Kobbet Ennhas Palace in La Manouba mixing native, Arabo-Andalusian and Italian motifs or the Essaâda Palace in La Marsa, an astonishing mix of Hispano-Moorish and French-Italian influences.
Vernacular architecture
The identity of Tunisia is also discovered in the richness of its vernacular architecture. In the north, you can discover the traditional gourbis, made of branches and thatch, or elaborated with earth bricks and straw. In the fishermen's villages, the houses delight the eye with their whiteness punctuated by bright colors - found on balconies and moucharabiehs - their roof terraces and their elegant patios. Sidi-Bou-Saïd is the proud representative. The island of Djerba has its own architecture, that of the menzels, large farms protected by high walls grouping stables, granaries and workshops around the main house, the houch, organized around a central patio. On the borders of the desert, Saharan architecture has developed, which can be recognized by its ochre brick facades arranged in such a way as to create beautiful geometric patterns, as in Tozeur. But the most astonishing vernacular dwellings are to be discovered in the south of Tunisia. It is there that the Berbers, trying to escape the Arab conquest, have imagined an underground habitat. In Matmata, they really dug under the ground and thus created troglodyte habitats. Seen from the sky, the village looks like a lunar landscape with its giant craters, up to 10 m deep, at the bottom of which are the patios of these amazing houses. When they could not dig in the ground, the Berbers dug in the side of the cliffs and erected astonishing fortified villages, the ksour, whose mysterious silhouettes dominate the ridges. Chenini is composed of three floors of troglodyte houses integrated into a colossal structure whose citadel seems to be an extension of the stone. In the ksour, the houses have a fenced stone courtyard to ensure the privacy of the home. But the most visible structures of these villages are their ghorfas, fortified granaries, whose vaulted cells are superimposed, like the cells of a beehive. Serving as workshops and warehouses, some have also been transformed into houses. The most beautiful examples of this architecture can be seen in Ksar Ouled Soltane, Douiret and Ghomrassen
Colonial architecture
Under the French protectorate, Tunis and Sfax were endowed with new extensions called "European cities", characterized by a checkerboard plan and wide tree-lined avenues. At first, neo-styles were favored by the government. The ancient Cathedral Saint-Louis of Carthage is an astonishing mixture of Byzantine and Moorish styles, with its polychrome friezes, its horseshoe arches and its blue earthenware domes. Neo-Moorish buildings then multiplied, combining traditional orientalist motifs with the new technical possibilities offered by cast iron, steel and concrete. The architect Raphaël Guy is the great representative of this trend. The Bab-Souika Post Office in Tunis with its minaret-shaped bell tower is one of his most famous achievements. Then the neo styles will give way to an astonishing art nouveau effervescence which, again, will compose with the oriental ornamentation. The great figure of this trend is the architect Emile Resplandy to whom we owe in particular the Municipal Theater of Tunis with its ramps with superbly chiseled ironwork and boxes protected by moucharabiehs. The buildings of the street Oum Kalthoum are also proud representatives of this trend with their stairwells very worked, their floral and animal motifs and their mosaics in facade. The Italians also participate in this architectural revival, like Giuseppe Abita and his buildings recognizable by their balconies and rotundas and their ornamental wealth. The Italian community is so important in Tunisia, and in Tunis in particular, that neighborhoods such as Petite Sicile are developing. There are small houses with one or two rooms reminiscent of the modest traditional homes of Sicily. But there were also important buildings such as the Gnecco Palace, the Rossini Italian Theater or the Italian Consulate, whose simple and sober volumes are a perfect illustration of fascist architecture. Art Deco is more discreet, but has a representative of size: the Great Synagogue of Tunis, with its walls with geometric patterns and bright colors. Astonishing! Between 1928 and 1932, the billionaire George Sebastian had a superb villa built in Hammamet, mixing traditional architecture and European design... and unknowingly began the transformation of the peaceful city into a popular tourist resort.
Contemporary Tunisia
Independence was translated into architecture by brutalism and the international style. The Hotel du Lac in Tunis, a glass, concrete and steel structure whose floors are connected by cantilevered staircases at each end creating an inverted pyramid, is one of the most famous buildings. Just like the Africa Hotel and its glass curtain that we owe to Olivier Clément Cacoub, a great architect of the time, who also realized many presidential palaces - between sobriety of the lines and monumentality of the volumes -, the Olympic complex of El Menzah, or even the Hotel des Congrès of Tunis. It is also to Cacoub that we owe, in 1979, the creation of the first integrated tourist resort of the country, Port El Kantaoui, imagined on the model of Sidi Bou Said. Since the 1960s, the Tunisian Riviera has seen a proliferation of hotels and marinas, a concrete linked to mass tourism that continued until the 1990s with the creation of the resort Yasmine Hammamet and its hundreds of hotels and its "fake" medina. Fortunately, these concrete giants do not spoil the charm of the original medinas! At that time, the population of Tunis continued to grow. To accommodate it, the city multiplied concrete buildings on the outskirts of the city, while developing new areas, such as the Pearl of the Lake, around the newly reclaimed lake. At the same time, the city became aware of the importance of revaluing and revitalizing its historic center, multiplying preservation campaigns. This concern for the past does not prevent the city from imagining the wildest projects. In 2011, the City of Culture baffled many with its architecture mixing futurism and oriental decor. Today, it is the project of the Economic City of Tunisia that leaves ... speechless. Unveiled in 2014, this project is that of a future mega-complex integrated into the modern city of Enfedha. This is where Russian billionaire Vasily Klyuki plans to build the White Sails Hospital & Spa, a spectacular cross between a skyscraper and a sailing liner. Less extravagant and more respectful of tradition, the Art Village Arena project in Utica was designed by the MOA agency, with an amphitheater whose wooden slat façade is a tribute to local crafts. A respect for tradition can be found at the Dar Hi Hotel in Nefta, a superb ecolodge whose troglodyte rooms are directly inspired by Tunisian vernacular architecture. The latter is more and more converted to ecotourism... a nice way to discover a unique heritage!
