6-28-14. Tunis, Tunisia
Tunis makes Naples look like Berlin. Largely on account of the political confusion following the Arab Spring revolution, many of the government services taken for granted in Western Europe – including, mostly notably and noxiously, garbage disposal – are infrequent or ill-regulated. Public transportation, my chief concern, is relatively efficient; but the metro and light rail are poorly maintained and often ludicrously overcrowded. Worse still, from my perspective, is the almost total lack of signs to mark station names. Tunis works, in short, but it is about as tourist-unfriendly as can be imagined.
I first faced the challenges of negotiating Tunis while trying to reach the Bardo museum, located in the far northern part of the city. After counting my way to the proper metro station (there were no signs), I managed to get extravagantly lost for nearly an hour in the neighborhood of the museum. Finally asking directions from the most-relaxed unit of military police in my experience, I realized that I had walked right past the entrance twice, from different directions.
But the museum – which I entered, despite all my confusion, only a few minutes after its opening –was worth all of these inconveniences. It is often said that the Bardo holds the most important collection of Roman mosaics in the world. Whatever the truth of this claim, the collections are absolutely magnificent. The rooms of the museum (a former palace of the beys of Tunis) house a number of remarkable sculptures in marble and bronze, some well-carved sarcophagi, and good displays of Roman and Carthaginian pottery. But the mosaics displayed on the floors and walls of nearly every room are breathtaking. The first room on the main floor alone contains more mosaics of the highest quality than almost museum in the world, and the rest of the galleries were equally impressive.
This is the Louvre of mosaic: most of the works on display are masterpieces, and even those you’ve never heard of are worth a look. Besides the famous portrait of the poet Virgil, displayed on the main staircase, highlights included a whole series of mosaics depicting splendid late antique villas, a vivid depiction of the Cyclopes making thunderbolts for Zeus, and – perhaps the museum’s finest piece – an incredibly lifelike representation of Neptune riding his chariot over the waves. I felt like I left each room too soon; but the first floor was rapidly filling with tour groups (Tunis is a cruise port), and I had only the afternoon to see Carthage.
A gallery of mosaics in the Bardo:
The ruins of Carthage, a little more than ten miles north of Tuins, are now mostly covered by the whitewashed villas of a modern suburb. This sprawl and medieval stone-robbing have reduced the visible remains of one of the ancient world’s greatest cities to a few sad remnants. Enough survives, however, to give some sense of its former splendor. If nothing else, the fact that the existing ruins are spread over an area some three miles from north to south gives an idea of the ancient city’s vast extent. The isolated nature of the visible ruins, however, requires the would-be visitor to walk five miles or more to see everything; and in the heat of a Tunisian afternoon, this can be daunting.
Just getting to Carthage was something of an adventure. The commuter train was dangerously overcrowded, to the point that some of the passengers forced open the doors and hung out over the tracks to catch the breeze. Since most of the windows were gone, however, this little trick was probably unnecessary. At one point, the pole to which I had been clinging since the beginning of the ride was gripped by no less than six other passengers, with whom I was pressed literally cheek-by-jowl. Fortunately, the worst of the crowds cleared off when the train passed the beach, and I had no problem getting off at my stop – besides, of course, the fact that it was totally unmarked.
With only a few exceptions, the ruins of Carthage were unimpressive, largely on account of the aforementioned modern development. The famous circular harbor, which once housed the navy that humbled Rome, is now the site of a marina; the Tophet, burial ground for the infants sacrificed to Baal, is entirely surrounded by villas.
Even the great Antonine baths, the largest in the Empire outside Rome itself, survive as little more than a series of massive foundations. From a vantage point on the Byrsa hill, ancient citadel of Carthage, I could more or less reconstruct the footprint of the ancient city, if only in barest outline. The bay of Carthage is still beautiful, its turquoise water whipped to whitecaps by a wind from the Mediterranean. The stony hills on either side still guard the pebbled shore. But Dido would recognize little else, if she landed here today.
The ride back to Tunis was even more crowded than the outbound train. Emerging from the car soaked in sweat, I ordered a quick dinner to go from the most convenient restaurant, trudged up to my room, and collapsed in its air-conditioned embrace.