Tunis

Tunis is a crossroad of civilizations. Its culture is a synthesis of different influences accumulated over 3,000 years of history. By its central geographical position in the Mediterranean Basin, only 140 km away from Europe through the Strait of Sicily, anchored to the African continent, linked to the Maghreb region, to the Arab and Islamic world, Tunis was in the center of an expansion movement from Mediterranean civilizations and the main monotheistic religions. 

Tunis history reveals a past where Mediterranean cultures have succeeded themselves. The Berber –Amazighs – represented a cultural and ethnic constant to which were added other ethno cultural elements that have been integrated and assimilated to different degrees, leaving a legacy of more or less significance throughout the centuries. 

Thus, in the modern Tunis, culture is a synthesis of the mixed legacy of Berber, Punic, Roman, Arab, Turkish, European, African, Jewish, Christian and Islamic culture. 

These different influences can be found today in varied elements such as patrimonial sites, architecture, music, customs and traditions, traditional clothes, cuisine… 

But the most revealing element of the cultural identity remains, of course, language. The Tunisian way of speaking, although a variant of spoken Arabic, which shares numerous similarities with other variants of the modern Arabic, especially from the Maghreb region, incorporates numerous Euro-Mediterranean elements such as Italian, French, Spanish and Turkish influences, deeply integrated in the Arabic language. 

Thus, diversity is a characteristic of cultural identity and therefore a sign for a predisposition to intercultural dialogue within the urban community, which represents nearly the third of the Tunisian population. 

Mayor of Tunis