تونس

Carthage was founded on this coast in the ninth century BC and grew into the great maritime power of the western Mediterranean, contesting the sea with Rome for more than a century before its destruction and Roman rebuilding.

The Arab conquest of the seventh century founded Kairouan, which became the first great centre of Islamic learning in North Africa and the base from which Islam spread west to the Atlantic and north into Europe.

Aghlabid, Fatimid, Hafsid and Ottoman rule followed, then the French protectorate and independence in 1956. The medinas of Tunis, Sousse and Sfax still hold the shape of all of it.

The Great Mosque of Kairouan, begun in 670, set the pattern for mosque architecture across the Maghreb. The amphitheatre of El Jem, which seated more than thirty thousand people, is among the largest and best preserved Roman arenas anywhere.

Dougga stands as the most complete small Roman town in North Africa, Kerkouane preserves a Punic town that Rome never rebuilt, and the medina of Tunis holds some seven hundred monuments within its walls.

Southern Tunisia opens into the Sahara at the salt flats of Chott el Jerid and the dune fields around Douz, with mountain oases at Chebika, Tamerza and Mides tucked into the rock.

The north is greener: cork oak forest in the Kroumirie hills, and Ichkeul Lake, a World Heritage wetland where hundreds of thousands of migrating birds stop each winter.

Tunisian malouf, the Andalusian music brought by refugees from Spain, is still performed in the concert halls and zawiyas of the coastal cities.

The country holds one of the world's greatest collections of Roman mosaics at the Bardo Museum, and its craft traditions — Nabeul pottery, Kairouan carpets, Djerba weaving and silverwork — remain in daily production.