20 Best Things to Do in Tunis: A Local's Guide (2026)

Ask us what there is to do in Tunis and the honest answer is: far more than most visitors expect, and nearly all of it within half an hour of the coast. We host guests at Résidence Green B11 in Aïn Zaghouan Nord, and we spend a lot of time redrawing three-day itineraries at our kitchen table. This is the list we actually give people — twenty things worth your time, roughly in the order we would tackle them.

The four you shouldn't skip

1. Get lost in the Medina of Tunis. A UNESCO World Heritage site that is still a working city rather than a museum: covered souks, hammams, courtyard palaces and craftsmen's workshops threaded through a maze of lanes. Go in the morning, wander on purpose, and accept that you will walk out carrying something you had no plan to buy.
2. See the Zitouna Mosque. The Great Mosque sits at the heart of the Medina and is the axis the entire souk system was built around — the perfume sellers nearest, the noisier trades pushed to the edges. Non-Muslim visitors are generally admitted to the courtyard rather than the prayer hall, and the colonnade alone justifies the detour.
3. Give the Bardo National Museum a proper morning. The best museum in the country, holding what is widely considered the finest collection of Roman mosaics in the world, installed in a former Beylical palace so ornate the building is half the experience.
4. Walk ancient Carthage. Not one site but a scatter of them across a leafy suburb: the Antonine Baths dropping down to the sea, Byrsa hill with its museum and Punic foundations, the Roman theatre, the circular naval harbour. A combined ticket covers the main sites, so give it a half day.

Downtown Tunis, on foot

5. Walk Avenue Habib Bourguiba at dusk. The tree-lined French-colonial boulevard that anchors modern Tunis, with the clock tower at one end, the Cathedral of St Vincent de Paul and the wonderfully over-decorated Municipal Theatre partway along. Early evening is when the whole city walks it.
6. Spend an hour in the Marché Central. Tunis's central market: fish counters, mountains of olives, spice stalls and harissa sold by the ladle. Even if you have no plans to cook, it is the most vivid hour you will spend downtown.
7. Book a hammam. The steam-bath-and-scrub ritual is ordinary weekly life here, not a spa novelty. Ask which sessions are for men and which for women, bring flip-flops, and expect to leave slightly stunned and extremely clean.
8. Climb through Belvédère Park. The city's green lung on a hill north of downtown, with an Ottoman koubba pavilion near the top and a long view back over the rooftops and the lagoon.

The coast, north of the city

9. Sidi Bou Saïd. The blue-and-white clifftop village everyone photographs, and it earns the attention: stepped lanes, studded doors, jasmine and a drop to the Gulf of Tunis. It fills with day-trippers from mid-morning, so come early or come for sunset.
10. Ride the TGM end to end. The old light rail runs from Tunis Marine at the edge of downtown out through La Goulette, Carthage and Sidi Bou Saïd to La Marsa. It is cheap, scenic, and the easiest way to hop between the coastal villages without a car.
11. Do the La Marsa corniche properly. A real seafront promenade, a wide sandy beach and a dense run of cafés — including the old Café Saf-Saf, built around a well and a waterwheel, which is where you should be drinking your first mint tea.
12. Have a fish lunch in La Goulette. The old port district between the lagoon and the sea, where the point of the meal is grilled fish, slata mechouia and a very long lunch.
13. Swim at Amilcar or Salammbô. Small, unglamorous local beaches on the Carthage stretch, reachable in minutes from the northern suburbs and far quieter than La Marsa in August.
14. Take an afternoon at a Gammarth beach club. North of La Marsa the coast turns into loungers, pools and long lunches — worth one lazy day if your trip is about sun rather than ruins.
15. Visit Ennejma Ezzahra. Baron d'Erlanger's palace on the slope below Sidi Bou Saïd, now a centre for Arab and Mediterranean music. Go for the interiors and the garden, and check whether a concert falls during your stay.

Eat like a Tunisois

16. Eat standing up at least once. Brik — a paper-thin pastry triangle folded around egg and tuna and fried — plus fricassé and kaftaji are the holy trinity of Tunisian street food, and they cost almost nothing.
17. Order lablabi for breakfast. Chickpea broth poured over torn bread with cumin, harissa, olive oil, capers and an egg, eaten with a spoon on a cold morning. Nothing else in Tunisian cooking is more loved or less photogenic.
18. Sit down for couscous or ojja. Friday couscous is close to a national institution; ojja — eggs poached in spiced tomato with merguez or prawns — is the dish we cook for guests who arrive hungry and late.
19. Mint tea with pine nuts, and a bambalouni. Order the tea heaped with pine nuts on a café terrace, then buy a bambalouni — a hot sugared doughnut, fried in front of you — from a stand in Sidi Bou Saïd.

And one for a longer stay

20. Get out of the capital for a day. Within a few hours' drive: Dougga, the best-preserved Roman city in North Africa and another UNESCO site; Kairouan for its Great Mosque and its makroudh; Bizerte's old fishing harbour; the hot springs and cliffs of Cap Bon around Korbous.

How to fit it together

Three days is enough for the Medina, the Bardo, Carthage, Sidi Bou Saïd and a couple of coastal evenings — provided you don't move hotels halfway through. Base yourself in the northern coastal corridor and day-trip inwards; our guide to where to stay in Tunis explains why we push everyone that way. Getting between all of the above is cheap if you use taxis properly, so read up on what taxi rides actually cost before your first ride, and if you're still weighing the trip up at all, we've written an honest answer to whether Tunisia is safe to visit.

Almost everything on this list is a short hop from us. Résidence Green B11 is a one-bedroom apartment in Aïn Zaghouan Nord with a rooftop pool, a gym and secure parking — roughly 10 minutes from Carthage and from La Marsa beach, about 15 to Sidi Bou Saïd, and 10 to 15 minutes from Tunis-Carthage Airport. Unpack once, and spend your week ticking off the list instead of moving your suitcase.