Two days covers Sousse. The first is the medina: the Ribat, the Great Mosque fifty metres from it, the souks, and the Archaeological Museum in the kasbah, which holds Tunisia's second-largest collection of Roman mosaics. The second is the coast, either Boujaafar and Port El Kantaoui or the metro south to Monastir. El Jem is 60 km away and worth a third.
Sousse has a UNESCO medina with a ninth-century fort at its gate and a beach running north from it for ten kilometres. That pairing is why the Tunisian Sahel sells package holidays, and why the Aghlabid ribat is still standing: this has been a port worth defending since before Carthage.
Ziyadat Allah I rebuilt this monastery-fort in 821: a square enclosure, thirty-five cells around a courtyard, one gate. The watchtower in the corner is the reason to climb. From the top the medina wall, the Great Mosque and the port line up in one frame.
Built in 851 and fifty-five metres from the ribat, it looks like a fort because it was one: crenellated walls, corner turrets, no minaret. The colonnaded courtyard is the visit. The prayer hall is closed to non-Muslim visitors.
Tunisia's second-largest collection of Roman mosaics after the Bardo, laid out inside the kasbah. Neptune in a chariot pulled by hippocamps, Bacchus riding with tigers, and two hunting floors in the rear gallery. It reopened in 2012 after a rebuild.
UNESCO listed it in 1988 as a town of the first centuries of Islam that kept its shape: the wall, the kasbah, the ribat, the Great Mosque and Bou Ftata all inside it. The souks run through the middle, and the lanes climb the whole way west.
Roman Thysdrus built it around 238 AD for some 35,000 spectators, and it still stands three tiers high with the arena floor and the underground passages open. Nothing in Africa is bigger, and nothing comparable in Europe is this empty.
Five kilometres of second to fourth-century Christian galleries under the western edge of town, cut into soft rock and holding more than 15,000 burials. A short lit stretch is what visitors see. Access has been intermittent for years.
A marina built from nothing in 1979 in whitewashed Andalusian style, with 340 berths and the hotel strip behind it. It is not old and does not pretend to be. Come for the boat trips, the two golf courses and a flat evening walk.
The city beach: a broad sand strip running north from the medina along the corniche, with cafés on the boulevard behind it. Public, packed through July and August, and the ground the Aoussou carnival parades along each summer.
A merchant house against the medina's north wall, kept as its family left it: tiled courtyard, carved wood, a bedroom for each of two wives, a Roman lamp and a marriage contract seven centuries old. The roof tower is the reward.
The oldest Islamic fortress in North Africa, begun in the eighth century and enlarged for a thousand years after. Its ramparts stood in for Jerusalem in Monty Python's Life of Brian. The Bourguiba mausoleum and its gold dome are a short walk on.
Five kilometres of Christian galleries. Access is intermittent, so check first.
The Sunday market west of the medina: clothes, spices, produce, second-hand everything.
The medina stays open late and the cafés fill after sunset. Daytime restaurant hours shift.
Tunisia marks the 1956 end of the French protectorate. A public holiday, so sites close.
The end of Ramadan and the year's biggest family holiday. It moves back eleven days a year.
Floats, brass bands and folk troupes along Boujaafar. It descends from a Roman festival for Neptune.
The 1957 abolition of the monarchy. A public holiday, and it lands beside the carnival.
Concerts and theatre through the summer. The 2026 programme is the sixty-seventh edition.
Orchestras play inside the Roman amphitheatre an hour south, on selected nights since 1985.
The Sahel's groves are picked and pressed, and the year's oil reaches the markets.
About 20 km south and the more useful arrival of the two: the Sahel Metro has a station at the terminal and runs on to Sousse Bab Jedid.
The larger of the two, about 45 km north and built for charter traffic. There is no rail link, so arriving here means a taxi or a hotel transfer.
SNCFT mainline trains run north to Tunis and south to Sfax through El Jem. The Sahel Metro is the separate coastal line to Monastir and Mahdia.
Yellow taxis are metered and cheap. Louages, the shared long-distance vans, leave when full from the station west of the medina for Kairouan and Tunis.
Fish couscous, the Sahel reading of the national dish. Usually grouper or bream.
Sea bream off the morning boats, charcoal-grilled whole with lemon.
Chickpeas in a cumin and garlic broth poured over torn bread. Breakfast, and cheap.
Eggs poached in tomato and harissa with lamb sausage, served in the pan.
Warka pastry folded around tuna, capers and a whole egg, fried to order.
Grilled peppers and tomatoes chopped with garlic, olive oil and tuna.
Fried peppers, pumpkin, potato and egg chopped together at the counter.
Semolina pastry stuffed with date paste and soaked in honey. Kairouan's, an hour west.
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