ATM Tour – Tunis – Day 4 – 10 January 2026

I had few things on the plate today, chief among them was a visit to the Bardo National Museum. The weather forecast was not promising for the first half of the day. It was raining off and on and a precipitation ranging from 30 to 40 percent was predicted till 2 pm. After a sparse breakfast I decided to endure what the weather had to throw at me in the morning. I had to walk about 30 minutes from my accommodation to the train station. Half the way it was bright and sunny and the other had me protecting the head with the jacket hood.

Getting to the station was in itself a task accomplished. I bought the 1 TND ticket and took my position on the platform. Not many people were around, presumably because of the weekend holiday. When the train arrived, I was more than pleasantly surprised. It was a new generation train set with comfortable seating inside. The doors of the train automatically closed in 30 seconds, and it continued on its journey without a jerk or any discomfort. I could make out that the trains were operated on single line with restrictions on running speed due to complete track renewal of one of the lines. The stations were being modified too.

What stunned me the most was that there were no level crossings at the road and rail interface points. Accepting the right of way of the train, the road traffic waited for its passage. Indeed, discipline and civility of the highest nature. Moreover, people behaved in the train as one should in a public transport; no graffiti, no vandalism, orderly ingress and egress. It was indeed a joy to experience this. Another piece that demolished the African template in the minds of ignoramuses like me! One does not have to be 4 trillion-dollar economy or with a hoary past to treat each other with respect and follow a process of human development that will leverage for the entire society.

I disembarked at the second stop. A kindly gentleman pointed to a building on the opposite side of the road as the Bardo National Museum. However, one has to walk about 7 minutes to get to the gate at the corner of the road. In light rain, side stepping puddles and sometimes leaping over them, I reached the entrance of the awe-inspiring building. The museum has plenty of parking lots for vehicles.

At the main entrance to the security gate is a short history of the development of the museum in the residence of the then Bey in 1891. The museum has been housed in an old beylical palace since 1888. Originally called the Alaoui Museum, named after the reigning bey at the time, it was renamed as the Bardo Museum after the independence of the country.

The biggest Tunisian museum, the Bardo National Museum, derives its reputation from its countless pieces of coming from the excavations undertaken in the country since the 19^th century. The quality and the rarity of many of these pieces bear witness to the country’s historical richness and uniqueness. It is one of the most important museums in the Mediterranean region and the second largest museum in Africa after the Egyptian Museum of Cairo. It traces the history of Tunisia over several millennia and across several civilizations through a wide variety of archaeological pieces.

The arrangements of the Bardo Museum were thought and resolved with the aim of increasing and reorganizing spaces for a better redistribution and a new presentation of the collections. The commemoration of the Bardo Museum’s Centennial in 1988 was a major event in its history. Starting from this date and following the efforts of the successive curators, many renovations were realised with a new didactic museographic presentation and in compliance with modern standards of conservation.

The museum contains one of the largest collections of Roman mosaics in the world. It also has a major collection of other antiquities of interest from Ancient Greece, Carthage, Tunisia, and the Islamic period.

The museum displays objects ranging from pre-historical artifacts to statues to coins to textiles to modern jewellery. The mosaics, such as the Virgil Mosaic, represent a major source for research on everyday life in Roman Africa. From the Roman era, the museum also contains a rich collection of marble statues representing the deities and the Roman emperors found on different sites including those of Carthage and Thuburbo Majus.

The museum also houses pieces discovered during the excavations of Libyco-Punic sites including Carthage, although the National Museum of Carthage is the primary museum of the Carthage archaeological site. The essential pieces of this department are grimacing masks, terracotta statues and stelae of major interest for Semitic epigraphy, and the stele of the priest and the child. The museum houses Greek works discovered especially in the excavations of the shipwreck of Mahdia, whose emblematic piece remains the bust of Aphrodite in marble, gnawed by the sea.

On 18 March 2015, an Islamist terrorist group attacked the museum and took tourists hostage in the building. The attack took the lives of 22 people.

For the return train I had to wait for nearly 30 minutes, and I made haste to get back to the accommodation because I was starving. On the way, I picked up a ham malfouf, without cheese, but spicy. The stomach was sated with half of the wrap. The other half of the wrap would serve well enough for dinner.

The Royal Mausoleum of Tourbet el Bey had been on the itinerary list for Tunis. Walking through the narrow by lanes of the Medina I reached the Mausoleum with just 2 minutes to spare for the scheduled 1330 hours closing of the attraction. I knocked the door a couple of times and there was no response.

Soon a person emerged from the corner of the wall of the mausoleum complex and identified himself as the caretaker of the mausoleum. He asked me, do you want me to look at the seconds hand also before closing the complex for the day! He was jousting and I proved a worthy foil. I told him, with the rain, he should have closed the monument against damage much earlier. Both of us broke into a laugh and he went his way, weighed down less by the guilt of not having waited till the actual closing time.

The 18th century Bayram Palace has been renovated and converted into a multipurpose facility for conferences, socialising, parties, wedding and the like. This is one aspect which can be seen in plenty in the Tunisian Medina. So many of the ancient accommodations are being renovated, primarily with a view to offering a feel of Tunisian life in the times past. Moreover, the Medina is where all the history and life is. Staying in this environment is truly a wonderful experience.

On the way back to the accommodation, I dropped by once again into the Soul des Chechias. Being a weekend, the place was crowded and, from the looks of it, many more were expected. The exquisite wood works in tea houses are a matter of artistic wonder. The colours used lend such vibrance that it captivates a customer.

That rounded up my short 4-day visit to the capital city of Tunisia, the 66th country I have visited.