Tunis
— — a white city held against a green hill.
Not only on a wall.
“The capital of Tunisia, set on a saltwater lagoon that opens to the Mediterranean through a narrow cut at La Goulette. The old medina, walled and shuttered and largely whitewashed, has held its shape since the eighth century and is one of the older intact Arab old towns in the Maghreb. Outside the walls the French built a long avenue of palms and cream-coloured arcades. Up the coast at Sidi Bou Said the houses are painted only two colours, white and a specific cobalt blue, and the rule has been local law since 1915.
Tunis, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Tunis sits on the western shore of the Lake of Tunis, a shallow lagoon connected to the Gulf of Tunis through a cut at La Goulette. The city has been the Tunisian capital since the Hafsid period in the thirteenth century and stands a few kilometres inland of the site of ancient Carthage. The metropolitan population is roughly 2.7 million. The Medina of Tunis was inscribed by UNESCO in 1979 and contains some seven hundred monuments, including the Zaytuna Mosque, founded in 698 and rebuilt under the Aghlabids in 864.
Two whites and one blue carry the city. Inside the medina the walls are limewashed to a chalky off-white that softens at sunset against the warm sandstone of the doorways. Outside the walls the Ville Nouvelle, laid out along Avenue Habib Bourguiba under the French protectorate from 1881, is built in cream stone with pale shutters. Twenty kilometres up the coast the village of Sidi Bou Said is held to two colours, white walls and a specific cobalt blue on every door and shutter, codified by a municipal rule in 1915 under the painter Rodolphe d'Erlanger.
The medina is open to walk freely and best entered at Bab el Bhar, the sea gate at the head of Avenue Habib Bourguiba. The Zaytuna Mosque courtyard is open to non-Muslim visitors most days outside prayer hours, typically 8:00 to noon, with the prayer hall itself closed to non-Muslims. The Bardo National Museum, three kilometres west of the centre, holds one of the great Roman mosaic collections, drawn largely from Carthage and Dougga. The TGM light rail runs from Tunis Marine through La Goulette to Carthage and Sidi Bou Said in about forty minutes.