Travelling in Tunisia: the resorts were built where the ruins already stood

Why Tunisia put its hotels on the coast

How the state planned the resort zones

Tunisian tourism was planned. Government and private groups began building it together in 1960, and by 1962 the trade, with 52,000 arrivals and 4,000 beds, earned two million dollars and had already become the country's main source of foreign exchange. The geographer Garrett Nagle described an industry that "benefits from its Mediterranean location and its tradition of low-cost package holidays from Western Europe", and France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom were its traditional markets.

Until the end of the century the main attraction was the north-eastern coastline around Tunis. The Seventh National Development Plan of 1989 then opened new tourist areas further south, among them the resort at Port El Kantaoui, just north of Sousse. Wikipedia's account of the sector puts more than 95% of Tunisia's hotel beds on the east coast and gives no year for the share. The dated count is older: in 2000 the country had 197,400 hotel beds in about 95,977 rooms, filled at an occupancy rate of 56%, and received 5,057,193 travellers, who spent nearly 1.5 billion dollars.

The trade divides its nights between five resort areas. Sousse, Monastir and Mahdia make up the Sahel coast; Nabeul and Hammamet sit on Cap Bon; Djerba and Zarzis lie in the south-east; Tunis is paired with Zaghouan; and Tabarka with Aïn Draham covers the north-west. Wikipedia gives each area a share of nights, but the shares add up to 112% and carry no year.

The equipment follows the beds. Eight marinas line the shore from Bizerte and Tabarka to Djerba, among them Gammarth, Sidi Bou Said and El Kantaoui, and the visitors who moor in them are mostly Europeans escaping their own winter.

How arrivals fell and came back

Two attacks in 2015 struck a museum of antiquities and a resort beach. On 18 March two gunmen in military uniform stormed the Bardo National Museum in Tunis, and 22 people were killed, 17 of them foreign tourists, by the BBC's count. On 26 June a gunman walked onto the beach at Port El Kantaoui and shot 38 tourists dead, 30 of them British according to the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO). A formal state of emergency has stayed in force since an attack on a police bus in the same year.

The numbers came back within three years. Arrivals reached 8.3 million in 2018, 6% above the figure for 2010. The pandemic then cut tourism earnings by 60% in 2020, to 563 million dollars. In 2009, before either shock, tourism had accounted for 7% of GDP and 370,000 jobs. On 22 December 2025 the Ministry of Tourism announced that arrivals since the start of the year had passed 11 million. The national tourism office was by then also courting Tunisians themselves, through a campaign called Tounes Lik that presents a new destination each week under four headings: the land, the sea, the stone and the desert.

What the coast holds besides the beaches

Tunisia ratified the World Heritage Convention on 10 March 1975 and has ten properties inscribed, nine cultural and one natural. Several of them share ground with the resorts.

What Carthage and the medina of Tunis keep

Carthage lies among the northern suburbs of Tunis, with Sidi Bou Said, La Goulette and La Marsa. Tradition dates its foundation by Phoenicians from Tyre to 814 BC, a date Britannica considers probably exaggerated, since nothing earlier than the last quarter of the 8th century BC has been found there. The city controlled much of the western trade in purple dye from the murex shell, and Rome destroyed it in 146 BC. Augustus centred the administration of the Roman province of Africa there in 29 BC. Much of Roman Carthage can still be traced, including the outline of many fortifications, an aqueduct, an odeum, a theatre built by Hadrian, an amphitheatre modelled on the Colosseum, baths, temples and a circus. The archaeological site was inscribed in 1979.

The village of Sidi Bou Saïd, known for its blue and white houses, was inscribed in 2026. The medina of Tunis lies a few kilometres from the sea. It was founded in 698 and inscribed in 1979, and the listed area covers about 280 ha with some 700 historic monuments in seven areas, among them the Zitouna Mosque, the Dar el-Bey and the gate of Bab Bhar. The souqs are divided by trade, with separate sections for jewellery and for the chechia, the red felt cap, and UNESCO's list of the medina's monuments names the Souq el-Attarine and the Souqs ech-Chaouachia. The Bardo National Museum in Tunis, opened on 7 May 1888, holds a collection of Roman mosaics.

Where Sousse and Djerba sit among the resorts

Further south the pattern repeats. The medina of Sousse was inscribed in 1988, Port El Kantaoui lies just north of it, and the Archaeological Museum of Sousse, founded in 1951, also keeps a large collection of mosaics. Sousse, Monastir and Lamta all grew from fortresses that protected the coast from Byzantine invasions, and two of the three are now Sahel resorts.

Djerba, an island in the Gulf of Gabès, is part of the Djerba-Zarzis resort area and was inscribed in 2023 as a testimony to a settlement pattern in an island territory. It has 39 synagogues and a Jewish community that dates back 2,600 years, and many Jews treat its El Ghriba synagogue as a place of pilgrimage, with celebrations there once a year and a legend that it was built with stones from Solomon's Temple. On 9 May 2023 a member of the National Guard killed five people there in an attack aimed at El Ghriba. Jerba Berber is still spoken on the island.

Fifteen more sites wait on the tentative list. They include Chott El Jerid and the oasis of Gabès, both entered in 2008, the medina of Sfax in 2012 and the troglodyte dwellings and ksour of the south in 2020.

How the interior is visited from the coast

Kairouan, El Jem and Dougga lie inland. The airport at Enfidha, north of Sousse, opened in 2011 to serve the resorts of Hammamet and Port El Kantaoui, and it serves inland cities such as Kairouan as well.

Kairouan stands in a plain in the centre of the country, at an almost equal distance from the sea and the mountains. It was founded in 670, UNESCO calls it "the most ancient Arabo-Muslim base of the Maghreb", and it was the capital of Ifriqiya for five centuries. The medina covers 54 ha and its suburbs another 20, inside ramparts that run for more than 3 km, and its Great Mosque was the model for several other mosques in the Maghreb. The listing also takes in the Basins of the Aghlabids, an open-air reservoir of two connected cisterns from the 9th century, and the Zawiya of Sidi Sahib, which holds the remains of a companion of the Prophet. Kairouan is also the national centre of carpet production.

The amphitheatre of El Jem is in the centre of the country too, in what was the small Roman city of Thysdrus. It was built around 238 AD entirely of stone blocks, free-standing and without foundations, on the model of the Colosseum in Rome without copying it. Its long axis measures 148 m and its short axis 122 m, and its capacity is judged at 35,000 spectators. The podium wall, the arena and the passages beneath it are practically intact, and the Djem Symphonic Festival is one of the summer festivals.

Dougga lies in the north-west, on a hilltop at 571 m above the valley of the Oued Khalled. The town existed for more than six centuries before Rome annexed Numidia and was probably the first capital of the Numidian kingdom. The site covers about 75 ha, and most of its public buildings date from the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD, fitted into an urban fabric that remained essentially Numidian.

When the coast has its season

The north has a Mediterranean climate of mild, rainy winters and hot, dry summers, with no marked seasons between them. About three quarters of the year's rain falls between mid-autumn and mid-spring. The sea moderates the coast: Sousse averages 7 °C in January and 32 °C in August, against 4 °C and 37 °C at Kairouan inland. In July and August temperatures can pass 40 °C when desert air spreads over the whole country, and the sirocco, a seasonal hot wind from the south, can dry out vegetation badly. Across the whole country the average temperature was 20.4 °C and the average rainfall 209.06 mm a year over 1995 to 2014, according to the World Bank's climate portal.

Summer is the festival season. The International Festival of Carthage runs in July and the International Festival of Hammamet through July and August, with jazz at Tabarka. On 24 July Sousse holds the Carnival of Awussu, a parade of symbolic floats, brass bands and folk groups near the beach of Boujaafar. Its date is the eve of Awussu, the August heat wave of the Berber calendar, and the feast began as the Neptunalia of Roman Africa.

Summer heat has a practical side. The FCDO's advice, updated on 24 July 2026, warns that heatwaves can lead the state electricity and gas company, STEG, to cut power for short periods, and that the cuts can stop air conditioning, mobile networks, internet connections and in extreme cases water supply and card payments.

Why the south keeps a winter calendar

The south runs to the opposite timetable. It has a hot desert climate in which summer daytime temperatures hover around 45 °C and winter nights can be cold, and Britannica records a temperature of about 55 °C at Kebili without giving a year. Tozeur, in the south-west, gets less than 100 mm of rain a year, against about 1,520 mm in the Kroumirie mountains of the north-west. Tozeur built its tourist trade on its old town and its souks for the winter and spring seasons, and the International Festival of the Sahara, held at Douz at the end of December, draws musicians and horsemen showing their saddles and local fabrics.

What the salt flats and oases hold

Chott El Jerid covers a salt-flat basin of about 4,900 km², and water lies on it only in the lowest areas except after heavy rain. With Chott El-Fedjaj and Chott Al-Rharsa in Tunisia and two chotts in Algeria, it forms a depression that was formerly an arm of the sea and runs nearly 400 km west from the Gulf of Gabès. A road now crosses the flats, and it has become a route for visitors heading to the oases and the towns of the hinterland. Tozeur and Nefta, the main oasis towns on its edge, are known for their date palms, and the oases are toured by horse carriage, with Deglet Nour dates to taste. The canyons of the south, at Mides and around the Berber village of Chebika, can be seen from the Lézard Rouge, an old train that makes a ride of a few hours with stops along the way.

Where the desert films were shot

George Lucas filmed the Tatooine scenes of Star Wars in southern Tunisian towns, as well as scenes for Indiana Jones, and Tataouine and the underground houses of Matmata became tourist destinations because of it. Anthony Minghella shot The English Patient in a south-western oasis. The cave dwellings of Matmata and the ksour of the region are adaptations to heat and drought, and Matmata Berber is still spoken in the town. Quad bikes are popular in the desert resorts, and the FCDO notes that their safety standards vary widely.

How the north-west and the borders differ

What the forests and Lake Ichkeul hold

The north-west is the other end of the rainfall range. Cork oak forest covers the Kroumirie mountains, with a fern undergrowth that shelters wild boar, and the forests around Aïn Draham and the coastal mountains near Tabarka are what visitors go for. The sources disagree on the height of the range: Britannica puts its sandstone ridges at about 900 m, and Wikipedia gives elevations of 1,050 m and says snow falls there in winter.

Ichkeul National Park, in the far north, was inscribed in 1980. UNESCO describes its lake as "the last great freshwater lake of a chain that once stretched the length of North Africa". Its water level and salinity alternate with the seasons, and in winter the lake and marshes shelter waterfowl from across the western Palaearctic, more than 300,000 ducks, geese and coots at once in some years. Three species of concern for their protection winter there, the white-headed duck, the ferruginous duck and the marbled duck, and UNESCO names three dams proposed on the rivers that feed the wetlands as a potential threat.

Where British advice draws its lines

The FCDO's travel advice, updated on 24 July 2026 and still current on 16 October 2026, advises against all travel to the Chaambi Mountains National Park and to three military operation zones on Mount Salloum, Mount Sammamma and Mount Mghila. It advises against all but essential travel to the area north and west of Ghardimaou, which takes in El Feidja National Park, to Kasserine Governorate including Sbeitla, to within 20 km of the Algerian border in El Kef and Jendouba governorates and to within 10 km of it further south.

On the Libyan side it advises against all travel to the militarised zone south of El Borma and Dhehiba, to within 20 km of the border north of Dhehiba, and to the town of Ben Guerdane, and against all but essential travel to within 75 km of the border. That last zone excludes Zarzis, the C118 road and the whole of Medenine Governorate north of it, so the Djerba-Zarzis resort area lies outside it.

How the rail and motorways link Tunisian towns

Tunisia has 29 airports, of which Tunis-Carthage International and Djerba-Zarzis International are the main ones, joined in 2011 by Enfidha-Hammamet. The railway, operated by SNCFT, totals 2,135 km in a figure the source gives without a year, and the Tunis area has a light rail network, the Métro léger, managed by Transtu. The FCDO notes a risk of petty crime on trains.

The road network runs to 19,232 km in the same undated count. Three motorways leave the capital: the A1 south to Sfax, with work under way from Sfax towards Libya, the A3 west to Béja and the A4 north to Bizerte, and traffic keeps to the right. British drivers can use a UK licence with a 1968 international driving permit for up to a year and need a green card as proof of insurance, and the legal limit for alcohol is lower than in England and Wales.

Road surfaces are of a reasonable standard in the FCDO's assessment, though large potholes open after heavy rain and many villages have unannounced speed bumps. Driving at night outside towns is hazardous because of unlit roads, vehicles without lights and livestock. Pedestrians walk on the roads and have the right of way. At military and police checkpoints drivers are expected to approach slowly, cross only with permission and show identity papers and a licence if asked.

What the rules say on arrival

What the border and customs check

British citizens can visit for up to 90 days without a visa, on a passport valid for the length of the stay, and border officials stamp it on arrival and check the length of the stay on departure. They may ask for contact details, an onward or return ticket and proof of accommodation, and a small number of visitors have been refused entry for lacking it. Hotels charge a tax per person per night, at a rate set by the star category and for no more than the first ten nights.

Currency controls are strict. Foreign currency brought in may need to be declared, undeclared sums can be confiscated, and Tunisian dinars may not be taken out of the country, so exchange receipts and declaration forms are worth keeping until departure. Drones are confiscated unless authorised, and recording devices, even toy walkie-talkies, can be held for the length of the visit. Antiquities need the authorities' permission to leave the country.

Which customs apply in towns and resorts

Visitors must carry identification, such as a copy of the passport's photo page. Beach clothing is accepted in the resorts, and at religious sites and in remote areas local custom is to dress modestly. Supermarkets may not sell alcohol on Fridays, and during Ramadan, which next begins in February 2027, its sale stops outside the holiday resorts. Same-sex sexual activity is illegal.

Arabic is the official language and Tunisian Arabic, called Tounsi, is what people speak. French, introduced under the protectorate between 1881 and 1956, keeps an important place in the press, education and government, and English and Italian are used to a lesser extent as lingua francas. The clocks keep Central European Time, UTC+01:00, all year; Tunisia last observed summer time between 2005 and 2008. Sockets take the Europlug and Type E plugs at 230 volts. Crafts differ by region, and Nabeul's trademark is glazed pottery in yellow, green or brown. UNESCO added harissa, with the knowledge and culinary practices around it, to its intangible heritage list for Tunisia in 2022.