A country · 133 places · 21 regions
Tunisia, all of it.
133 curated places across 21 regions — photographed, mapped, and noted with the season each is best in.
The 4 biggest regions — Tunis Governorate, Medenine Governorate, Nabeul Governorate and Béja Governorate — read below as chapters, with 17 more waiting past them.
Chapter I · Tunis Governorate · 20 places
Tunis Governorate
A clifftop village perched above the Gulf of Tunis, defined by whitewashed cubic houses with cobalt-blue doors and window grilles. The village overlooks the ruins of ancient Carthage and the open sea, and has historically attracted European painters and writers drawn by the quality of the light. Narrow stone-paved lanes connect the main square to terraced gardens with panoramic views across the bay. The blue-and-white palette, while now carefully maintained, lends the village an unusually coherent visual identity.
Chapter II · Medenine Governorate · 9 places
Medenine Governorate
Ajim occupies the southwestern corner of Djerba, facing the mainland across a narrow strait of the Gulf of Boughrara. It is the island's working port rather than its tourist one: a low town of whitewashed cubes and flat roofs, a harbour full of small wooden boats, and a ferry slipway from which vessels shuttle across to Jorf on the Tunisian mainland every twenty minutes or so through the day. The resorts and beaches lie on the far side of the island, 25 kilometres northeast at Houmt El Souk and along the northern coast. Around Ajim the landscape is salt flat, scrub, olive trees and shallow lagoon, with flamingos on the mudflats in winter. A town built on sponges and octopus. Ajim's economy has been maritime for generations, and specifically it has been built on sponge diving and octopus fishing. Divers from here worked the banks off southern Tunisia through the twentieth century, and sponge sorting and drying was a visible industry along the waterfront. Octopus is still taken with the traditional gargoulettes, unglazed clay pots strung in long lines and lowered onto the seabed, which the animals enter as shelter and are hauled up in. Stacks of these pots along the quays and beside the road are among the most characteristic sights on this coast. Boatyards on the harbour still build and repair wooden hulls. On screen. In the spring of 1976 the Star Wars production used Ajim and its outskirts for the exteriors of Mos Eisley, the spaceport where Luke and Obi-Wan hire the Millennium Falcon. Buildings on the edge of town supplied the low domed silhouettes seen as the landspeeder drives in, a squat white structure near the town's edge was shot as the exterior of the cantina, and a waterfront workshop stood in for the docking bay. Every interior, the cantina among them, was built and filmed in England. On the shore a few kilometres west of the town the crew put up the hermit's dwelling occupied by Obi-Wan Kenobi, a small domed structure on open ground above the sea. What survives, honestly. Not a great deal, and what does survive is unmarked. The building generally identified as the cantina exterior is a plain whitewashed structure with a low dome, in ordinary local use, without signage or interpretation; it takes a guide or a good set of directions to find, and there is nothing to look at beyond the shape. The hermit's dwelling on the coast was left to the weather after 1976 and progressively collapsed. What stands there now is a much-repaired shell, rebuilt and patched by local operators over the years, and it should be understood as a reconstruction on the original spot rather than as surviving film fabric. The setting, low scrub running down to a flat sea, is the genuinely evocative part. The rest of the coast. South and west of Ajim the shoreline breaks into salt pans and shallow inlets that support wintering flamingos, herons and waders, and the light over the Boughrara lagoon at the end of the day is exceptional. The mosque of Sidi Jmour stands alone on the western shore, whitewashed against open sea, and is one of the island's more atmospheric small monuments. Inland, the Guellala potteries work the local clay into the amphorae and water jars used across southern Tunisia, and the road between the two towns runs past kilns, drying yards and stacked jars in fields. Why the crew chose it. The reasoning behind the 1976 location scout is easy to reconstruct on the ground. Ajim's older buildings are single-storey, whitewashed, and roofed with shallow domes and barrel vaults, the result of building in a place with no timber and very little rain. Shot from low angles against a bleached sky, with the sea edited out, they read as unearthly rather than Mediterranean, and the flat scrub around the town gave the production clear horizons in almost every direction. Half a century later new concrete construction has filled in a good deal of that emptiness, and the frames from the film no longer line up with what stands there. Getting there and timing. The Ajim to Jorf ferry is the main southern link to the mainland and carries vehicles and foot passengers on a crossing of fifteen to twenty minutes, running through the day and, on a reduced schedule, at night; queues for cars build in summer and around holidays. From the north the island is reached instead by the Roman causeway at El Kantara. Local buses and shared taxis connect Ajim with Houmt El Souk in about 40 minutes. April to June and September to November are the best months, with mild sea temperatures and manageable crowds. There is little accommodation in Ajim itself, and most visitors come across from Houmt El Souk or the resort strip for half a day.
✦ April to June and September to November; the ferry runs year-round · $
Chapter III · Nabeul Governorate · 8 places
Nabeul Governorate
A resort town on the Cap Bon peninsula in northeastern Tunisia, historically known for its whitewashed medina and long sandy beach before large-scale resort development began in the 1960s. The old medina, enclosed within crenellated walls, retains a quiet residential character with jasmine-draped courtyards. The beach stretches for kilometres northward along a gently curving bay with calm, clear Mediterranean water. The town became an early enclave for European artists and intellectuals in the interwar period.
via Wikimedia CommonsChapter IV · Béja Governorate · 7 places
Béja Governorate
High above a fertile plain in northern Tunisia spread the ruins of Dougga, ancient Thugga — once the seat of a Libyco-Punic state before Rome annexed Numidia, later a prosperous provincial town under Roman and Byzantine rule. Its capitol, theatre and streets make this among the best-preserved Roman-era small towns in North Africa. UNESCO granted Dougga World Heritage status in 1997.
✦ October–April · $
Regions of Tunisia
- Tunis Governorate20
- Medenine Governorate9
- Nabeul Governorate8
- Béja Governorate7
- Tozeur Governorate7
- Tataouine Governorate6
- Kairouan Governorate5
- Sousse Governorate5
- Ben Arous Governorate4
- Bizerte Governorate4
- Jendouba Governorate4
- Kef Governorate4
- Mahdia Governorate4
- Monastir Governorate4
- Sfax Governorate4
- Kasserine Governorate3
- Kebili Governorate3
- Zaghouan Governorate3
- Siliana Governorate2
- Gafsa Governorate1
- Sidi Bouzid Governorate1
Every place in Tunisia
