Jeremy Seal immerses himself in Tunisia's Roman legacy Times, 4/10/1997
Last year, a Tunisian workman extending the foyer at the Carthage Museum struck something unforgiving with his spade. It proved to be the head of an eight-foot marble Apollo, buried deep in history's rubble. Keeping his head down was a wise move on this statue's part; for centuries, successive civilisations - Vandals, Byzantines, Arabs and Ottomans - regarded the country's Roman heritage as little more than handy depots of highly exploitable, pre-cut building blocks.
Today's visitors to this beguiling North African and Mediterrannean country, however, come to wonder rather than to plunder. Around the Carthage Museum foyer Apollo, who might have ended up as hardcore in other times, a cavern has been carefully excavated so that visitors can admire him in situ with the help of artfully angled mirrors. Increasingly, the Tunisian authorities are appreciating the value of the country's Roman remains, and not least as tourism attractions.
For the most part, Britain's 250,000 annual holidaymakers to Tunisia regard the country as a sun 'n Saharan sand destination, but many of them will visit at least one of the more accessible archaeological sites during their stay. Imperial Carthage, just north of the modern capital at Tunis, and the magnificent coliseum at El Jem an hour inland from the resort city of Sousse, where visitors dream of gladiators doing battle and of early christians being fed to the lions, are among the most popular choices for day trips.
There is, of course, much more. 'Inch for inch,' says Dr Nejib BenLazreg, archaeologist at Tunisia's National Heritage Institute, 'Tunisia has one of the highest densities of Roman settlements anywhere in the world, with at least 500 major sites.' Visitors wishing to do more than scratch the country's Roman surface prompted Tunisia operators Wigmore Holidays to launch a specialist archaeology programme three years ago.
Our visit began at the Bardo National Museum on the outskirts of Tunis (open daily 9am-4.30pm, price 3 dinars or £1.50), which is considered to house one of the best collections of Roman mosaics in existence. Magnificent in their own right, the Bardo mosaics effortlessly evoke a 1700-year-old society with an intensity, colour and humanity that puts the average museum's introductory video presentation to shame. Here are country scenes, all margined with fruit and vine leaves, of children drawing water from a well, of hunting and fishing, and of women collecting mushrooms in winter. There is city life too; one memorable mosaic details the chaotic building site that surrounds a church in construction. At the hippodrome, during the chariot racing, an officer holds out an amphora of wine to the winner in the champagne manner of Formula One racing.
Visiting nearby Carthage next, with these remarkable images fresh in our mind, made more than just geographical sense; your imagination should not expect much on-site assistance at Carthage, which has been plundered more extensively than any other Roman settlement in Tunisia. What remains jostles for space with Tunis' expanding suburbs, but visitors from Tunis on the cheap and regular TGM light railway at least have a choice of six train stops serving the sites. Most impressive are the Antonine Baths, a pampering complex par excellence with a handsome setting on the Bay of Tunis, and the atmospheric tophet, a pagan cemetery for sacrificial victims, both animals and children, that is overgrown with nasturtiums and purple-flowering caper plants.
After Carthage, we retreated to nearby Sidi Bou Said, the gorgeous blue and white, jasmine-clad hilltop village of keyhole-shaped doors which was established as Tunisia's favoured bohemian haunt in the early years of the century. Weekend crowds were promenading, and stopping for bonbalouni, the much-loved Tunisian doughnut. At the famed Cafe des Nattes, where a British traveller once sent back a cup of coffee because it had a scorpion floating in it - he then downed what he thought was a fresh cup only to find the same scorpion at the bottom - we drank traditional tea with pinenuts (the aux pignons) without incident.
We drove west along the green Mejerda Valley, through fields of wheat, olive groves and vineyards that defied our arid expectations, while clouds of swifts divebombed our minibus. Workgangs in red felt chechia beret-fezzes, with sprays of jasmine tucked behind their ears in the local custom, laboured at the roadside. 'This area was Rome's granary,' explained Dr BenLazreg, whose informative commentary bore no resemblance to the usual spiel.
At Dougga, remote enough to have been spared widescale plundering, we wandered among the excellently preserved theatre, the forum and the baths, the shops and even the 12 public toilets neatly arranged around three sides of a square. At Bulla Regia, we stood in the extensive basements of the villas that were designed to offer refuge from the fierce summer heat, marvelling at the immaculately preserved mosaics - Venus surrounded by dolphins, a bloody scrap between a lion and panther - that covered the floors of the state rooms.
On the road inland, we passed poppy fields and old men selling freshly baked bread, capers and almonds. Outside butchers shops, toy camels were hung in poorish taste to signify the wares within. 'Delicieux!' exclaimed a butcher, kissing his fingers, when I asked how they tasted. At Kairouan, Tunisia's Islamic city, the great 9th century mosque reared above the town. In its great courtyard, blocks inscribed with Roman script were visible in the walls.
The mosque, we were told, also contained 425 corinthian columns filched from Roman sites all over Tunisia. The idea that Tunisia's holiest mosque was physically supported by pillars from pagan temples appealed to us, imbuing the great building as it did with a wonderfully ironic impurity. In the memorable archaeological notion - of building blocks tumbling down the ages to serve in a succession of buildings dedicated to different gods and masters - we were left with an abiding sense of Tunisia's rich and varied history.
ENDS
Jeremy Seal was a guest of Wigmore Holidays (0171 486 4425) on their Aspects of Roman Tunisia archaeological tour, available on either a four-night basis (from £489) or on a one-week basis (from £595). Prices are all-inclusive, and guests are accommodated in hotels in the towns of Hammamet and Sousse. The tours are run during the winter - with seven hours of sunshine and pleasant temperatures, it is considered the best time for sightseeing. Those wishing to extend their stays can do so from £20 per person per night on a half-board basis.
Guide Books; The Cadogan Guide (£12.99) has excellent architectural coverage; a new edition is due next year.
The Rough Guide (£10.99)
Blue Guide Tunisia (£11.99)
SPECIALIST BREAKS IN TUNISIA
Despite its reputation as a sun 'n sea destination, specialist Tunisia operators Wigmore (0171 486 4425) and Panorama (01273 206531) offer a wide range of specialist holidays all year round
Wigmore Holidays are running two archaeology holidays this winter. They are between November 14-18 (£489 all inclusive), and February 15-22 1998 (£595 all inclusive).
Wigmore Holidays' most popular specialist holiday is the Sahara Adventure Tour, a seven-day tour with five days spent in the desert. The tour is by four-wheel-drive air-con landcruiser, and includes visits to ksour (fortified granaries) and troglodyte villages, as well as the oasis towns of Douz and Tozeur. From £599 including flights.
Panorama offers four and eight-day desert safaris that visit many of the filming locations for the 'The English Patient'. The eight-day safari, from November to April, starts at £425. Two, three and four-day safaris run throughout the year, and are available as add-ons to seven-night holidays.
Wigmore Holidays also run two birdwatching holidays every year taking in birding spots in the north such as Lake Ichkeul and Cap Bon, and a traditional Tunisian cookery course based in Tunis and Sidi Bou Said.
Wigmore Holidays have a winter painting holiday based at Sidi Bou Said, a traditional artists' haunt. Alternatively, Panorama offer a two-week painting holiday in April 1998 from £699, based on Hammamet and the Sahara.
Panorama also offer a sequence dancing holiday week in January 1998, with teaching sessions and dancing every evening at the Hotel Sol Azur, Hammamet, from £289 half board. And November 1997 sees a scrabble holiday week at the same hotel, from £290 half board.
Last year, a Tunisian workman extending the foyer at the Carthage Museum struck something unforgiving with his spade. It proved to be the head of an eight-foot marble Apollo, buried deep in history's rubble. Keeping his head down was a wise move on this statue's part; for centuries, successive civilisations - Vandals, Byzantines, Arabs and Ottomans - regarded the country's Roman heritage as little more than handy depots of highly exploitable, pre-cut building blocks.
Today's visitors to this beguiling North African and Mediterrannean country, however, come to wonder rather than to plunder. Around the Carthage Museum foyer Apollo, who might have ended up as hardcore in other times, a cavern has been carefully excavated so that visitors can admire him in situ with the help of artfully angled mirrors. Increasingly, the Tunisian authorities are appreciating the value of the country's Roman remains, and not least as tourism attractions.
For the most part, Britain's 250,000 annual holidaymakers to Tunisia regard the country as a sun 'n Saharan sand destination, but many of them will visit at least one of the more accessible archaeological sites during their stay. Imperial Carthage, just north of the modern capital at Tunis, and the magnificent coliseum at El Jem an hour inland from the resort city of Sousse, where visitors dream of gladiators doing battle and of early christians being fed to the lions, are among the most popular choices for day trips.
There is, of course, much more. 'Inch for inch,' says Dr Nejib BenLazreg, archaeologist at Tunisia's National Heritage Institute, 'Tunisia has one of the highest densities of Roman settlements anywhere in the world, with at least 500 major sites.' Visitors wishing to do more than scratch the country's Roman surface prompted Tunisia operators Wigmore Holidays to launch a specialist archaeology programme three years ago.
Our visit began at the Bardo National Museum on the outskirts of Tunis (open daily 9am-4.30pm, price 3 dinars or £1.50), which is considered to house one of the best collections of Roman mosaics in existence. Magnificent in their own right, the Bardo mosaics effortlessly evoke a 1700-year-old society with an intensity, colour and humanity that puts the average museum's introductory video presentation to shame. Here are country scenes, all margined with fruit and vine leaves, of children drawing water from a well, of hunting and fishing, and of women collecting mushrooms in winter. There is city life too; one memorable mosaic details the chaotic building site that surrounds a church in construction. At the hippodrome, during the chariot racing, an officer holds out an amphora of wine to the winner in the champagne manner of Formula One racing.
Visiting nearby Carthage next, with these remarkable images fresh in our mind, made more than just geographical sense; your imagination should not expect much on-site assistance at Carthage, which has been plundered more extensively than any other Roman settlement in Tunisia. What remains jostles for space with Tunis' expanding suburbs, but visitors from Tunis on the cheap and regular TGM light railway at least have a choice of six train stops serving the sites. Most impressive are the Antonine Baths, a pampering complex par excellence with a handsome setting on the Bay of Tunis, and the atmospheric tophet, a pagan cemetery for sacrificial victims, both animals and children, that is overgrown with nasturtiums and purple-flowering caper plants.
After Carthage, we retreated to nearby Sidi Bou Said, the gorgeous blue and white, jasmine-clad hilltop village of keyhole-shaped doors which was established as Tunisia's favoured bohemian haunt in the early years of the century. Weekend crowds were promenading, and stopping for bonbalouni, the much-loved Tunisian doughnut. At the famed Cafe des Nattes, where a British traveller once sent back a cup of coffee because it had a scorpion floating in it - he then downed what he thought was a fresh cup only to find the same scorpion at the bottom - we drank traditional tea with pinenuts (the aux pignons) without incident.
We drove west along the green Mejerda Valley, through fields of wheat, olive groves and vineyards that defied our arid expectations, while clouds of swifts divebombed our minibus. Workgangs in red felt chechia beret-fezzes, with sprays of jasmine tucked behind their ears in the local custom, laboured at the roadside. 'This area was Rome's granary,' explained Dr BenLazreg, whose informative commentary bore no resemblance to the usual spiel.
At Dougga, remote enough to have been spared widescale plundering, we wandered among the excellently preserved theatre, the forum and the baths, the shops and even the 12 public toilets neatly arranged around three sides of a square. At Bulla Regia, we stood in the extensive basements of the villas that were designed to offer refuge from the fierce summer heat, marvelling at the immaculately preserved mosaics - Venus surrounded by dolphins, a bloody scrap between a lion and panther - that covered the floors of the state rooms.
On the road inland, we passed poppy fields and old men selling freshly baked bread, capers and almonds. Outside butchers shops, toy camels were hung in poorish taste to signify the wares within. 'Delicieux!' exclaimed a butcher, kissing his fingers, when I asked how they tasted. At Kairouan, Tunisia's Islamic city, the great 9th century mosque reared above the town. In its great courtyard, blocks inscribed with Roman script were visible in the walls.
The mosque, we were told, also contained 425 corinthian columns filched from Roman sites all over Tunisia. The idea that Tunisia's holiest mosque was physically supported by pillars from pagan temples appealed to us, imbuing the great building as it did with a wonderfully ironic impurity. In the memorable archaeological notion - of building blocks tumbling down the ages to serve in a succession of buildings dedicated to different gods and masters - we were left with an abiding sense of Tunisia's rich and varied history.
ENDS
Jeremy Seal was a guest of Wigmore Holidays (0171 486 4425) on their Aspects of Roman Tunisia archaeological tour, available on either a four-night basis (from £489) or on a one-week basis (from £595). Prices are all-inclusive, and guests are accommodated in hotels in the towns of Hammamet and Sousse. The tours are run during the winter - with seven hours of sunshine and pleasant temperatures, it is considered the best time for sightseeing. Those wishing to extend their stays can do so from £20 per person per night on a half-board basis.
Guide Books; The Cadogan Guide (£12.99) has excellent architectural coverage; a new edition is due next year.
The Rough Guide (£10.99)
Blue Guide Tunisia (£11.99)
SPECIALIST BREAKS IN TUNISIA
Despite its reputation as a sun 'n sea destination, specialist Tunisia operators Wigmore (0171 486 4425) and Panorama (01273 206531) offer a wide range of specialist holidays all year round
Wigmore Holidays are running two archaeology holidays this winter. They are between November 14-18 (£489 all inclusive), and February 15-22 1998 (£595 all inclusive).
Wigmore Holidays' most popular specialist holiday is the Sahara Adventure Tour, a seven-day tour with five days spent in the desert. The tour is by four-wheel-drive air-con landcruiser, and includes visits to ksour (fortified granaries) and troglodyte villages, as well as the oasis towns of Douz and Tozeur. From £599 including flights.
Panorama offers four and eight-day desert safaris that visit many of the filming locations for the 'The English Patient'. The eight-day safari, from November to April, starts at £425. Two, three and four-day safaris run throughout the year, and are available as add-ons to seven-night holidays.
Wigmore Holidays also run two birdwatching holidays every year taking in birding spots in the north such as Lake Ichkeul and Cap Bon, and a traditional Tunisian cookery course based in Tunis and Sidi Bou Said.
Wigmore Holidays have a winter painting holiday based at Sidi Bou Said, a traditional artists' haunt. Alternatively, Panorama offer a two-week painting holiday in April 1998 from £699, based on Hammamet and the Sahara.
Panorama also offer a sequence dancing holiday week in January 1998, with teaching sessions and dancing every evening at the Hotel Sol Azur, Hammamet, from £289 half board. And November 1997 sees a scrabble holiday week at the same hotel, from £290 half board.