Travel Guide Takrouna

On the road to Zaghouan, Takrouna is a beautiful site, about twenty kilometers from Bou Ficha. Both Berber and Punic, the village clings to a rocky promontory with its reddish brown houses. The road is lined with agaves and prickly pear trees. The place preserves the traces of a very distant human occupation: Punic symbols of Tanit (the goddess of fertility) or of Malqart and vestiges of ovens. The architecture of the village presents certain singularities: the plan is in the shape of a Latin cross. This curiosity is attributed to the presence of Romans or Christianized Berbers who would have transmitted this architectural tradition to their descendants. They would have "resisted" in their own way to the Islamization which reached the country from the 7th century. In the village, we will nevertheless see a mosque and a mausoleum of an Ottoman style. From the mountain, water flows towards the plains in the direction of Zaghouan. The Romans, at the time of Hadrian, built here an aqueduct which brought water to Carthage and of which some vestiges remain. Between Takrouna and Enfidha there is a French cemetery with 300 graves; the few Muslim graves are dressed with a military helmet in homage to these soldiers who were loyal to General de Gaulle during the French campaign in Tunisia (from November 1942 to May 1943). Every year, on June 18, the French ambassador visits the site.