Overview
This is a XIXth century palace located in the heart of the medina and turned into a museum of popular arts and traditions. The palace is composed of a main residence, secondary apartments and outbuildings, all forming a proper little town closed on itself around a small square that communicates with the rest of the neighbourhood through a large gate.
The main part of the palace was designed in the traditional style of North-African stately homes, with a monumental entrance giving into staggered hallways, leading in turn into a vast paved courtyard with a marble basin and bordered on its four sides by “apartments” that used each to accommodate a family. The T shaped layout of the “apartments” is also classical, and the decoration is an usual combination of Andalusian and Italianate styles.
The display concerns the rooms on the ground floor of the main palace building. For the most part the objects are those used in the life of the XIXth century population of Tunis. Various scenes of daily life, or some ceremonial moments, are reconstructed in the different rooms to show the attitudes or the products of traditional crafts. The outbuildings house occasional exhibitions or collections of craft objects.
