Tunisia Heritage Tour — 8 days

Day 1 — Arrival, Carthage and Sidi Bou Said

We collect you at the airport, your hotel or the La Goulette quay, then climb Byrsa hill to see exactly what Carthage was watching for out at sea. The circular Punic harbours, the Antonine baths open to the gulf, the Roman villa quarter. The day ends in the blue-and-white lanes of Sidi Bou Said, which empty out pleasantly late in the afternoon.

Day 2 — The Bardo and the Tunis medina

The morning goes to the Bardo Museum, housed in a beylical palace: the world's largest collection of Roman mosaics, many of them lifted from the very sites you will stand in later this week. In the afternoon we walk the medina, from the Zitouna mosque through the chechia and perfume souks to the carved doorways of the Ottoman palaces and the quiet turn towards Dar Ben Abdallah.

Day 3 — Cap Bon: Kerkouane and Kelibia

We drive out through the citrus country of Cap Bon. Kerkouane is the one Punic town the Romans never built over: house plans, the distinctive hip-bath basins, streets running intact towards the sea, all of which makes it unusually easy to read for a site of its age. Fish lunch in Kelibia, the fortress above the coast, then back towards Tunis.

Day 4 — Testour, Dougga and the Medjerda valley

We head inland along the Medjerda valley. A stop at Testour, founded by Andalusians expelled from Spain and known for the minaret with its backwards clock. Then Dougga, the best preserved Roman town in North Africa: the capitol still standing, the theatre cut into the slope, the Libyco-Punic mausoleum and a vast view over wheat country. Night near Le Kef or Teboursouk.

Day 5 — Bulla Regia and the Chemtou quarries

Bulla Regia and its underground villas, dug out to escape the summer heat: you go down a flight of steps and walk on mosaics still lying exactly where they were laid. Nearby, Chemtou, whose yellow marble veined with pink was quarried for Rome and floated downriver. Then the drive to Kairouan, long but steady, across the grain plains.

Day 6 — Kairouan, first capital of Ifriqiya

A full day in the Aghlabid city: the Great Mosque, its white courtyard bristling with columns salvaged from older Roman sites, the Aghlabid basins that once watered the town, the blue-tiled zaouia of Sidi Sahbi, and the medina with its carpet workshops. Kairouan rewards a slow pace, working through shaded lanes between glasses of pine-nut tea.

Day 7 — El Jem and the Sousse medina

The amphitheatre at El Jem rises out of the olive groves almost whole, and you can walk the underground galleries that lifted animals and gladiators into the arena. The small museum next door holds some superb mosaics. In the afternoon, Sousse: the early Islamic ribat, the plain and powerful great mosque, the walled medina and the ramparts at sunset.

Day 8 — Zaghouan, Thuburbo Majus and return

We work our way north through the interior. Thuburbo Majus is quiet and little visited, so its forum and baths are often yours alone. At the foot of Djebel Zaghouan, the Water Temple marks the spring that supplied Carthage through the aqueduct whose arches still stride across the plain. Drop-off at the airport, your hotel or the port, at the time agreed with you.