La Médina et ses Faubourgs and Amphitheatre of El Jem

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. La Médina et ses Faubourgs

   Kairouan's medina is a walled city that still behaves like one. Its limewashed alleys wind between houses with blue doors, studded with nails in geometric patterns, and the main street leads past a mix of carpet shops, sweet-sellers and workshops where men hammer copper and sew leather. The walls, mostly rebuilt in the eighteenth century, enclose a place that has been important since the seventh century, and UNESCO listed the old city in 1988. The faubourgs, or suburbs, spread outward from the walls, with the cemeteries, the Aghlabid water basins and a number of tombs and zawiyas.

   Read the complete La Médina et ses Faubourgs write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   La Médina et ses Faubourgs is where the day begins. Next is Medina of Sousse.

2. 2. Medina of Sousse

   Sousse is a city that has been busy for nearly three thousand years, under the Phoenicians, the Romans and the Arabs, and its old town, the medina, still has the crowded, enclosed feel of a place built behind walls. It stands on the Tunisian coast, in the region called the Sahel, a belt of olive groves and white towns between the sea and the dry interior. Sousse was Hadrumetum in Roman times, and later became an important port, and it was ringed by walls in the ninth century, parts of which still stand.

   Read the complete Medina of Sousse write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Medina of Sousse comes up about 57 km into the recorded legs. Next is Amphitheatre of El Jem.

3. 3. Amphitheatre of El Jem

   El Jem is a small Tunisian town with a very large building. Rising out of the flat plain of the Sahel, the amphitheatre of Thysdrus, as the Romans called the place, is one of the biggest ever built, a three-tiered oval of pale limestone more than a hundred and thirty metres long, and it was designed to hold some thirty-five thousand spectators. Construction began in the early third century, probably under the rule of the wealthy local landowners who grew rich on olive oil, and it was never fully finished, because the African governor who encouraged it was killed in a revolt in 238.

   Read the complete Amphitheatre of El Jem write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   about 129 km into the recorded legs you reach Amphitheatre of El Jem. Next is back through Medina of Sousse.

4. 4. back through Medina of Sousse

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Medina of Sousse write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   back through Medina of Sousse, late in the day. Next is La Médina et ses Faubourgs.

5. 5. La Médina et ses Faubourgs

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete La Médina et ses Faubourgs write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Back at La Médina et ses Faubourgs. That is the ride.