Tunis, Tunisia
We took the early morning ferry from Trapani (Sicily) to sail to Tunis. We got to the dock at around 7am. The ferry had already arrived, coming down from Sardinia, and the semi-trailers were rolling off.
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Putting the Pieces Together at the Bardo Museum
If you are interested in mosaics, make sure you put time aside to visit the Bardo National museum. The museum is just four kilometers out from the centre of Tunis on the light rail. Everyone knows where it is, so if you get lost, just ask.
You will be astonished at the number and quality of the mosaics that have been collected from the various Roman sites around Tunisia. The building itself is just as amazing – an old Ottoman style palace with beautiful plastered ceilings and tiling, marble staircases and lovely grounds.
We spend the whole day at The Bardo. The tour groups come and go around us for their fleeting visit. But our itinerary allows us the time to study the expertise involved in putting these artworks together. There are wall mosaics, floor mosaics, and gravestone and stelae mosaics. They depict all sorts of themes from myths to pictures of everyday life. There are some depictions of wild animals.
Some of the exhibition areas in the Bardo museum are devoted to displaying artefacts from particular areas or regions, others have a more thematic offering. But they are all stunning. We were amazed at the size of the mosaics, some covering walls two stories high.
An interesting highlight of the museum is a floor devoted to the display of articles found in a recently discovered ancient ship wreck.
The prices in the gift shop are quite reasonable, so if you are looking for a good quality souvenir, this may be just the place (and they also serve a nice rejunivating coffee).
The museum is housed in an old beylical palace, so the building itself is worth seeing. The displays trace the history of Tunisia and Northern Africa over the millenia.
You can read the wiki for the Bardo Museum here.
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