Blue doors, open dunes.
Whitewashed lanes at Sidi Bou Saïd, the Bardo mosaics, El Jem’s arena, Djerba’s shallows and two days of desert out of Douz. What each trip is like, what it costs, and where to book it.
What most people book first.
A morning in the Tunis medina, the mosaic floors at the Bardo, El Jem’s arena at midday and the long run south to the Sahara. These are the trips a Tunisia itinerary tends to hang on, whatever else goes around them.
Private tour: Medina,Carthage ,Sidi Bou Said, Bardo Museum+lunch
Private Tunis tour with Medina, La Goulette, Carthage and Sidi Bou Said, plus lunch and pickup. UNESCO sites and blue-white views.
From $46 per person
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★ 4.5Few regrets hereCarthage, Bardo Museum, Sidi Bou Said and Medina Private Day TourFrom $30153 reviews
★ 5.0Goes quicklyDiscovery ride on horseback or camel 2h30From $45153 reviews
★ 5.0A first-trip standbyCook and Connect: Tunisian Culinary Adventure with a Local FamilyFrom $75109 reviews
★ 4.0Worth the 5 a.m. pickupQuad ride on the hills of HammametFrom $46104 reviews
★ 5.0Fits a spare morningPrivate Excursion to Testour, Dougga and Bulla Regia from Tunis.From $127100 reviews
★ 5.0Rarely disappointsGuided Bike Tour of Carthage Archeological Site in TunisiaFrom $9188 reviews
The desert starts four hours from the sea.
Leave Douz or Tozeur before the heat, cross Chott el Jerid while the salt still mirrors the sky, and end the day at a camp with nothing between the tent and the dunes. Most travellers give this two days. Nobody comes home wishing they had given it one.
Coast, capital, or Sahara?
Tunisia is small enough to see all three and big enough that the order matters. Here is what each base hands you, and what you give up by choosing it.
Base yourself in Tunis
The capital and its ruins
6 to 8 hours (approx.) · from $30 · 512 reviews
One city holds the Punic harbours at Carthage, the mosaic floors of the Bardo, a walled medina still trading as a souk, and Sidi Bou Saïd’s blue doors above the gulf. A half day covers a corner of it; a full day covers all four. Right if you land at Tunis Carthage and want the history in one sitting.
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Stay on the water
The Sahel and the islands
from $116 · 87 reviews
Sousse, Monastir and Hammamet put you inside a ribat and back on the sand before lunch, and Djerba adds flamingo sandbanks and shallows warm enough to swim into November. Every inland ruin is still a day trip from here. Right for families and anyone whose hotel is already booked on the coast.
See the Sahel and Djerba →
Head for the dunes
The desert leg
from $154 · 80 reviews
Douz, Ksar Ghilane, the granary ksour above Tataouine and the film sets out at Ong Jemel. It costs two days minimum and a long drive each way, and it is the part people describe first when they get home. October to April, or start very early.
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The south sleeps outside.
Camps out past Douz and Ksar Ghilane set up while the sun drops behind the erg: bread baked in the sand, drums after dinner, and a sky with no town anywhere near it. You are back on the road by mid-morning, so the day after is still yours.
Djerba keeps the shallow end.
Flamingo sandbanks you can wade out to, catamarans off the bay at Hammamet, first kitesurf lessons in water that never goes over your chest. The sea here holds its warmth into November.
Granaries and film sets.
Chenini holds its ridge above the palms, Ksar Ouled Soltane stacks its grain cellars four storeys around a yard, and at Ong Jemel a whole desert town was built for the cameras and simply left standing. Long drives, strange horizons.
El Jem still seats thirty thousand.
The amphitheatre at El Jem is one of the largest Rome ever built, and you can still walk the corridors that run under the arena floor. Dougga keeps a whole hill town standing, Bulla Regia hid its villas underground to beat the summer, and the Bardo holds the mosaics that came out of all of them.
Pick the part of the map you want.
Tunis for ruins and mosaics. Sousse and Hammamet for a beach with day trips attached. Djerba for flat warm water. Tozeur and Douz for the desert. Most trips end up using two of them.
Sort it by the kind of day.
A camel at sunrise, a 4x4 across the salt flats, a museum morning in Tunis, a catamaran off Hammamet. Choose the shape of the day and see what it costs.
Most of Tunisia is a day’s drive.
The coast hotels sit within three hours of a Roman amphitheatre, a holy city built round a ninth-century mosque, a mountain oasis with a waterfall in it, and the first real dunes. Pick-ups run from Hammamet, Sousse, Monastir and Djerba.
Five days that cover the country.
Tunisia rewards a route more than a base. This is the order most first trips settle into, and the reason for each leg.
Days 1–2
Tunis, Carthage, Sidi Bou Saïd
Walk the medina before the shops shutter at midday, take the Bardo’s mosaic floors slowly, then finish above the gulf where every door is painted the same blue.
See the Tunis tours →
Day 3
El Jem and Kairouan
Two hours south the arena rises out of flat farmland with almost nothing built up around it. Kairouan’s Great Mosque and its carpet workshops fill the way back.
See the Sahel day trips →
Days 4–5
Down to the Sahara
Chott el Jerid at first light, the mountain oases above Tozeur, a night under canvas past Douz, and back up the coast on day five. Book this leg first; the good camps go early.
See the desert routes →
Just off the road.
★ 5.01 day excursion to Chenini-TataouineFrom $1068 reviews
★ 4.0Cultural Experience of Bedouin Village in MahdiaFrom $359 reviews
★ 5.0Half-Day Traditional Tunisian Cuisine Cooking Class in TunisFrom $659 reviews
★ 4.5Half-day Ong Jemel & Mos Espa from TozeurFrom $819 reviews
★ 5.0Private Half Day Tour Sousse medina, Kantaoui and HerglaFrom $239 reviews
★ 5.02Days 4×4 safari from Sousse/Hammamet/Tunis, night 100km deep in Sahara desertFrom $4359 reviews
★ 4.0Ancient Carthage and Sidi Bou Said Half Day Tour with LunchFrom $769 reviews
★ 4.5Sunset or Sunrise Camel ride in the Sahara Desert of DouzFrom $659 reviews