Medina of Tunis Walk

Medina of Tunis Walk

The Medina of Tunis is a mesmerizing maze of crowded, narrow allyways in the center of the Tunisian capital of Tunis.

Tunisia is a small country located in central, north Africa. Today I'm headed to downtown Tunis to walk around and give you a feel of of the city's busy streets.

We start our walk on the wide streets of Avenue Habib Bourgiba and Avenue De France which is eerily similar to walking down a street in Paris. The contrast couldn't be bigger as we enter the classic, Arabic medina with it's narrow streets and shops selling carpets, dates, local sweets, ceramics, leatherworks, tin plates and a lot more.

From Wikipedia:

The Medina of Tunis is the medina quarter of Tunis, the capital of Tunisia. It has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1979.

The Medina contains some 700 monuments, including palaces, mosques, mausoleums, madrasas and fountains dating from the Almohad and the Hafsid periods.

Founded in 698 around the original core of the Zitouna Mosque, the Medina of Tunis developed throughout the Middle Ages. The main axis was between the mosque and the centre of government to the west in the kasbah. To the east this same main road extended to the Bab el Bhar. Expansions to the north and south divided the main Medina into two suburbs north (Bab Souika) and south (Bab El Jazira).

Before the Almohad Caliphate, other cities such as Mahdia and Kairouan had served as capitals. Under Almohad rule, Tunis became the capital of Ifriqiya, and under the Hafsid period it developed into a religious, intellectual and economic center. It was during the Hafsid period that the Medina as we now know it took on its essential form. It gradually acquired a number of buildings and monuments combining the styles of Ifriqiya, Andalusian and Oriental influences, but also borrowing some of the columns and capitals of Roman and Byzantine monuments.

00:00 Intro
01:40 Avenue Habib Bourgiba
07:50 Avenue De France
09:45 Medina
20:07 Kitten
20:17 Medina (continued)
28:25 Rooftop and View of Medina
29:15 Medina (continued)