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Published: July 24th 2022
Douriet
Douriet is a Berber village A Roman bathhouse (still in use) a Roman amphitheatre (where Monty Python's been filming) and the remains of a Roman city (not in use)
Douriet In the previous blog entry from Tunisia I wrote about a few Berber villages I visited.
Douriet is another such village. Like the other villages, Douriet is today mostly in ruins.
Sfax Sfax is a large city on the Tunisian east coast. The mighty city walls are still today protecting the old town of Sfax with its medina, the shopping quarters. Well, "protecting" perhaps is not the word the locals would use. The walls are probably more of a problem than a protection today.
There are gates in the wall of course. The largest of these is named Bab Diwan.
El Jem One of the highlights of this entire trip was the world heritage listed amphitheatre in
El Jem. It was built almost 2000 years ago, during the Roman era, and is one of the largest and also one of the best preserved Roman amphitheatres in the world.
The amphitheatre in El Jem is not nearly as famous as the
Douriet
Like several other Berber villages I visited, Douriet is today mostly in ruins Colosseum in Rome, which we visited
in 2007 and also
in 2018. But unlike the one in Italy, in El Jem it is possible to walk around everywhere and explore. You can climb the stand and pretend that you are watching a show. You can enter the arena and pretend that you are the Maximus from Ridley Scott's movie
Gladiator and get ready to fight whatever evil emperor Commodus throws at you. Or if you are more into Monty Python than Ridley Scott, you might want to re-enact one of the scenes that was recorded here when they made
Life of Brian.
Kairouan Kairouan is a city in north-western Tunisia. The city has for hundreds of years been an important religious centre and its value has been recognised by UNESCO which has added it to the World Heritage List.
I started my visit in Kairouan by going to see the
Aghlabid basins. They might look like modern swimming pools but are in fact 1200 years old. Also they were not designed for recreational swimming, they were an important part of ancient Kairouan's water supply system. The water was brought, via aqueducts, from mountains far away. The water was
Sfax
Sfax is a large city on the Tunisian east coast. The mighty city walls are still today protecting the old town of Sfax with its medina, then stored in the Aghlabid basins before it was distributed into the city.
The most important religious site in Kairouan is the
Great Mosque. Non-Muslims could not enter the prayer room in the Great Mosque, but in other areas of the compound I was welcome to roam around.
Maktar Maktar is an archaeological site and the ruins of a Berber city. Later the city was conquered and was included in the Roman Empire. The site covers a large area and the remains of an amphitheatre, a forum/marketplace and triumphal arch can easily be identified.
Hammam Mellegue Hammam Mellegue is an ancient Roman bath house. Most of the bath is today in ruins but a small section is still in use. That's quite impressive as it was built around 1800 years ago.
Dougga Dougga is the ruined remains of a city which was inhabited during roughly a millennium from around 600 BCE. It is a large archaeological site where, among other things, a triumphal arch, a theatre, the forum/marketplace, a bathhouse and temples rather easily can be identified.
Just like Kairouan and El Jem,
Bab Diwan
The largest of the city gates is named Bab Diwan. Dougga has been added to the UNESCO's world heritage list.
When I look at the pictures from this trip I am sad to see that I so totally have failed to capture the beauty of the landscape I travelled in. Trust me, Tunisia is much more colourful than my photos let you think.
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RENanDREW
Ren & Andrew
Tunisia
We were on the verge of planning a trip to Tunisia when the Arab Spring took place... I hope we can make it there some day soon. Thanks for posting your memories :)