NATIONAL BARDO MUSEUM

Unfortunately closed since July 2021, the Bardo Museum remains the most important archaeological museum in the Maghreb. Created in 1882 in one of the pavilions of the beylical palace, it was then part of a set of buildings constructed by the Hafsides. Made sadly famous after the attacks of March 18, 2015, the museum is located at the exit of the city to Beja and Bizerte, next to the university campus. The objects it houses are divided into four departments grouping collections belonging to an era of the country's history: Carthaginian, Punic, Christian and Arab-Muslim. A fifth department is devoted to Greek bronze and marble objects from the underwater excavations of Mahdia. The Bardo Museum is renowned for housing the largest collection of Roman mosaics in the world from Carthage, Sousse, Dougga or El Jem. Some of the works on display are unique, such as the mosaic "known as Virgil". These pieces are a valuable source for research on daily life in Roman Africa. From the same Roman period, the museum also has a rich collection of marble statues representing the deities and Roman emperors. Among the beautiful pieces not to be missed: the grimacing masks, the terracotta statues or the steles of the Libyan-Punic period; the Greek works discovered in the excavations of the Mahdia ship, with the marble bust of Aphrodite and finally the blue Koran of Kairouan in the Islamic department.