A Local's Guide to Tunis: Top Sights, Food & Hidden Corners

By Mohamed Ayad · Oct 3, 2026 · thing to do in Tunisia

My grandmother had a rule about guests. You never ask a guest if they want tea. You just bring it. I thought about that rule on a gray November morning a few years ago, standing in a narrow lane of the Medina of Tunis with a visitor from Ohio who had been in the country for about eleven hours. She was gripping her phone like a lifeboat. A shopkeeper, a man I'd never met, stepped out of a doorway…

The Tea Nobody OrderedMy grandmother had a rule about guests. You never ask a guest if they want tea. You just bring it.I thought about that rule on a gray November morning a few years ago, standing in a narrow lane of the Medina of Tunis with a visitor from Ohio who had been in the country for about eleven hours. She was gripping her phone like a lifeboat. A shopkeeper, a man I'd never met, stepped out of a doorway the width of a wardrobe and put a small glass of mint tea with pine nuts in her hand. He didn't say a word about carpets. He said, "Welcome. You look cold."She looked at me, suspicious.

Eleven hours in, she had already been warned by three blog posts that every friendly gesture in North Africa was a trap."Drink it," I said. "Then, if you want, look at his rugs. If you don't, say merci, inshallah next time, and he'll wish you a good day. That's the whole transaction."She drank it. She bought nothing. He waved her off like an old friend.That moment is the thing I most want to give you in this Tunis travel guide, more than any list of attractions. The city is generous, a little chaotic, deeply layered, and far easier than its reputation suggests once you know how it breathes. I was born here and I still get lost in the Medina on purpose.

This guide is how I'd show Tunis to a cousin visiting from abroad, with the best things to do in Tunis, where to eat in Tunis, a tight one-day route, and a handful of hidden gems in Tunis that most itineraries skip.If you'd rather have someone walk you through it, private tours in Tunis with a local guide are a good way to compress the learning curve. But you can absolutely do this on your own, and the rest of this article will tell you how.Why Tunis Deserves More Than a LayoverTunis is a city most travelers treat as a doorway. They land at Tunis–Carthage airport, get whisked toward the beach resorts, and never look back.

That's a shame, because within a 20-kilometer radius of the city center you can stand in a medieval Islamic old town, walk through the ruins of a Phoenician and Roman superpower, drink coffee in a blue-and-white clifftop village, and eat fish at a seaside port that smells of grilled sardines and diesel. Few capitals pack that much into so little space.Some quick anchors, so the geography stays clear in your head for the rest of this guide:Tunis Medina sits at the heart of the city, the historic core.Avenue Habib Bourguiba and the colonial-era "Ville Nouvelle" start about 1 kilometer east of the Medina gates.Lake of Tunis lies just beyond, a shallow lagoon separating the city from the Gulf of Tunis.Carthage is roughly 15 kilometers northeast of the Medina.Sidi Bou Said is about 20 kilometers northeast, on a cliff above the Mediterranean.La Marsa is about 20 to 22 kilometers northeast, the last stop on the commuter rail line and a seaside suburb where many Tunisians actually spend their weekends.Most of those places are connected by a single train line, the TGM, which we'll get to.

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