STROLL IN THE MEDINA

The medina of Tunis is rich in history... and stories. It is an opportunity to travel back in time through a maze of alleys, between light and shadow. The pleasures of the labyrinth, the happiness of the souks, everything is there. Once past the Gate of France (1848), a vestige of the Hafsid enclosure that enclosed the medina, you enter the historic heart of Tunis, listed by UNESCO as a cultural heritage of humanity. Ancient city, founded thirteen centuries ago by the conquerors of the Byzantine Carthage, the medina is ordered around a great spiritual center, the great Ez-Zitouna mosque. Two arteries start from the door: the street of the Kasbah and the street Jamaa-Ez-Zitouna, both very animated, lined with very picturesque shops. There is everything according to the districts..

The surroundings of the mosque were reserved for the so-called "noble" crafts, while the more polluting trades, forges and tanneries, were confined to the periphery. Today still, quality craftsmen, gathered by corporations, perpetuate this tradition. Originally, the Great Mosque was the politico-religious center where commercial agreements and transactions were also negotiated. Very soon, it lost its secular role and acquired a more and more pronounced sacred character. Its fame as a center of teaching of legal sciences and religious thought attracted, in addition to Tunisian students, many students from the interior of the country and from abroad (Maghreb and Africa). To these students, the medersas offered free accommodation. Relayed today by the modern zeïtounienne university, it continues to dispense a religious teaching and to gather the faithful for the prayer. It is in the morning that the animation is the most lively. Dreamers will find all the charms of the Orient in these souks overflowing with fabrics, carpets, jewelry, leather bags and copper trays. Behind anonymous facades, the aesthetes will discover the splendor of the palaces with walls decorated with superb ceramics and immense domes of finely chiseled stucco. The merchants of the souks still attract passers-by as they did travelers in the Middle Ages. They always offer the most varied goods of Tunisian crafts and trade. One discusses, one haggles, but one is not obliged to buy, even at the end of the longest palavers. Always be kind when someone insists... A small smile and a polite refusal accompanied by an "aichek" (thank you) will touch the seller who will not insist any longer.