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Founded from Tyre and inscribed in 1979, Carthage was the metropolis of Punic civilization in Africa before Rome rebuilt it as a capital.

The only known Punic city in the Mediterranean that Rome never built over. Abandoned in the third century BC and never reinhabited since.

Probably the first capital of the Numidian kingdom, and called by UNESCO the best preserved Africo-Roman town in North Africa.

Founded in 670 AD, the oldest Arabo-Muslim base in the Maghreb and capital of Ifriqiya for five centuries. Its Great Mosque became the model.

Founded in 698 AD and inscribed in 1979, some 700 historic monuments across 280 hectares, and a city that was once among the richest in the Arab world.

Spring and autumn suit the ruins, summer suits the coast, and winter is when Tunisia holds more than 300,000 waterbirds at Ichkeul.

Most visitors get 90 days without a visa. Two things catch people out: an unstamped passport, and a tourist tax nobody mentions until check in.

The dinar is a closed currency and you are not allowed to take it out of the country at all. Keep every exchange receipt from the first day.

Tunisia is compact enough that a single week can take you from a Mediterranean beach to a salt lake in the Sahara. Pack for both.

Trains along the coast, shared taxis everywhere else. The louage is the thing to understand: it leaves when it is full, not when a timetable says.

Tunisia is US Level 2 and has been under a formal state of emergency since 2015. Six areas are named Do Not Travel and none is on a normal itinerary.

Tunisian cooking is the spiciest in the Maghreb and harissa is the reason. Both the paste and the couscous around it are inscribed by UNESCO.

Tunisia is Arab, Amazigh and Mediterranean at once, and its craft traditions are inscribed heritage rather than souvenir production.

Tunisia marks its year with harvests, a Saharan gathering at Douz and a fishing season in the Kerkennah Islands that UNESCO inscribed in 2020.

UNESCO inscribed Djerba for a settlement pattern built by communities of different faiths, and names the synagogue and the churches among its parts.