Els Slots

1.50 The Netherlands - 11-Mar-25 -

This is the first review of a visit to the Djerba WHS after its inscription. The site has received horrible reviews and an exceptionally low rating from our community, but I thought maybe it would all make more sense with the help of an OUV-frame. It’s about a dispersed but homogenous settlement and land-use pattern, characterized for example (but not limited to) self-sufficient rural communities with their own water supply, palm groves and tiny mosques. That’s why it includes 22 rather featureless and abandoned neighbourhood mosques.  

For my visit, I tried to make a representative pick from the locations without having to rent a car. In the morning, I visited 4 components in and north of the capital city Houmt Souk. The medina of Houmt Souk is not a rural settlement, of course, but the trade town where everything ended up. Included is just a small zone (the old funduqs, the covered market, the Mosque of the Turks and St. Joseph Church; but not Borj El Ghazi Mustapha). It feels like a smaller version of the Medina of Tunis, and even in the early morning, it is all geared up to receive the French and German beach tourists. I then walked on to another component, the Church of St. Nicholas. A sign on the door says that it only opens on Thursdays from 10-13. The sizeable church (upper photo) can only be seen from the sidewalk across the street.

My next goal was the Mosque of Sidi Smain (lower photo), located along the Houmt Souk Corniche. This is one of the fortified mosques that formed a defense system along the coast. It lies across the street from a much prettier newer mosque with the same name, but it's only this old one that is inscribed. The last one on my morning visit was the Mosque of Sidi Zekri. This is situated in what is locally known as the ‘Tourist Zone’, although it’s more surrounded by wasteland and half-finished apartment buildings. It’s an underground mosque of an interesting design, but you cannot enter.

In the afternoon, I went southward, first by taxi to Erriadh. Formerly known as Hara Seghira, this was a major Jewish neighbourhood. It’s now a small town that tempts to attract the selfie crowd by creating “Djerbahood”, streets full of murals. I had no idea where to find former Jewish landmarks such as the yeshiva described in the nomination file.

I then walked on for 10 minutes to reach the El Gribah synagogue. I had read online that there’s an entrance fee and that you have to show your passport, but nothing was asked for. Your bag has to go through a security scanner, but that’s all. Tunisian military personnel guard the entrance road since the site has suffered from several terrorist attacks over the past decades. You can visit the synagogue interior freely (it’s open daily, except Saturday, in the morning and late afternoon) and take pictures. Next to it lies a courtyard with rooms for Jewish pilgrims.

The Verdict

I tried hard to understand and like it more than the previous visitors did, but despite my research and having all documentation available, I came back even more confused. There may be a hint of OUV here or there (the sheer survival of the El Ghriba synagogue, the distinctive defensive lines formed by its coastal mosques), but what really put me off was the lack of interpretation on site. It also fails on almost all of the WHS Commandments. Djerba feels like a kid that has received yet another present (World Heritage status that was apparently so urgent it required an AB overrule) and never even unpacked it 2 years later.

The official number of locations is also confusing: I think we have another (the 23rd!) example of “Incorrect UNESCO 'Number of locations'” here. The site was nominated as a serial site of 31 components: the nomination dossier, the maps, and the ICOMOS evaluation all have 31. However, the UNESCO website currently shows 30 components, and the 2024 SOC report by Tunisia had 32. A “Zone Côtière inhabitée” was added in the northwest, while Khazroun / Sedghiene / Guecheine are seen as one by UNESCO where they are separate elsewhere. I don’t see a decision about a boundary modification, so my best guess is that the original 31 locations are still valid.

Practicalities

• If you want to see a fair number of the 30+ components, you’d need to rent a car or charter a driver for half a day as the sites are so scattered around the island and some are really remote. I did my 6 components on foot and by taxi. There are local buses as well, but they don’t run often. Taxis on Djerba are a good bet since they are plentiful, routinely use the meter and are cheap (about 3 EUR for a 15-minute ride). Bikes can be rented as well (and even quads!), but as with hiking, the sun is fierce and the distances are just a bit too long.
• I stayed overnight in the old center of Houmt Souk, in a nicely renovated townhouse (Dar Lola) in the core zone. Houmt Souk is mostly alive during the day when the day-trippers from the beach resorts come and visit. In the evenings, many restaurants were closed. Maybe this was also caused by it being Ramadan: so they did not bother to open at all if they couldn’t serve lunch. Shops and supermarkets remained open during the day. 

Read more from Els Slots here.

Svein Elias

1.50 Norway - 20-May-22 -

On our Tunisia journey this April, we visited the island of Djerba. Visiting all the country’s WHS’ we wanted to add on a visit the only site which will supposedly be forwarded (next year). Not knowing too much about the island upfront thus we decided to stay a day (and two nights) to explore it. Even though the island is far from small the mentioned elements in the site description are limited, so with all due respect to the island’s nature, history, culture and trade traditions, there is not much to see!

The nature - is semi-desert like impression all over, except for then inhabited areas. Sandy and rocky, some scattered palms and some slightly cultivated fields. The description says it’s a “dispersed habitat illustrating a great capacity of adaptation”, but we failed to see the beauty or the uniqueness.

The history - is more interesting, but the tangible part is limited.

The culture - is albeit more visual. There are heritage museums showing off the lifestyle and clothing and their way of managing daily life.

The trade traditions - is also partly “documented” through the heritage museums and some of the buildings.

The collection of scattered elements is meant to represent the heritage and we spent our time visiting a collection of them. We used a handy app called “Djerba Guide“.

The most interesting element was the venerable synagogue of Ghriba from the 19th century. The exterior is decent, not flashy. The interior though, is more interesting (3 pictures). Even though we haven’t been visiting many synagogues it looks interesting, and it is historic. According to legend it’s the oldest in Tunisia and the founding claims that either a stone or a door from Solomon's Temple or the Second Temple is incorporated in the building.

Borj El Ghazi Mustapha (one picture) is an ancient castle in Houmt Souk and built on the site of an old ribat from the early days of Islam. It is the largest and best-preserved local castle and is from the 14th century. A nice site to visit, but it doesn’t appear unique.

The Numidian mausoleum of Henchir Bourgou is nothing more than a small piece of a ruin, not even recognisable as a piece of a wall. It could have been anything! It’s probably old, but it’s hard to see the origin.
As it is also a sub-site of the TWHS “The royal Numidian mausoleums” we were disappointed. This can’t possibly be the main element of that TWHS!

The archaeological site of “the opulent ancient city of Meninx” is a serious of stones lined up in the semi-desert like surroundings. You can see there is patterns on the stones, but there is impossible to see where they “belong”.

There are many mosques, even one underground (which can be visited). Those mosques are not anything like other mosques we have visited before, they are more modest end simple. A good thing, but hardly universal value.

Both in Houmt Souk and Guellalla (the ceramics city) there are heritage museums. The first one small, but the second one is bigger and more interesting, although just modest.

Our final attempt was to look closer at the town Houmt Souk. The “fondouks”, the trading posts or buildings, looks nice although they now are converted to hotels, restaurants or cafes. You can imagine their origin.

The OUV on Djerba is hard to understand. The only maybe is the old synagogue of Ghriba.

Getting there

Since we are “a driving couple” we took our rental down south from Tunis, through five WHS’, and the TWHS’ of Sfax and Oasis of Gabes. From Sfax it’s a 3 ½ to 4-hour ride and from Gabes it’s slightly more than two hours.
We approached the island through the ferry from Jorf entering the west side of Djerba, a ferry ride of 20 min. We had practically no wating time, but we heard later that we were lucky.
We left the island through “The roman road”, the artificial mainland connection at the south end.

We stayed a night in a lovely 5 room Dar called Dar Bibine (www.darbibine.com) in the town of Erriadh run by an expat couple from Belgium. The town has numerous building walls with street art which was interesting although the art is modern.

### Randi & Svein Elias

Zoë Sheng

0.50 Chinese-Canadian - 06-Apr-22 -

Update Sep 2023: This was actually inscribed even though it wasn't recommended to be, but naturally the process these days is so chilled that pretty much anything is inscribed as World Heritage. Anyhow, the main reason for my update is that the sites I posted about were not included even though I thought Meninx would have something if expanded on and what a surprise that the weird "rock" wasn't inscribed. Instead they only inscribed mosques, mosques, and more mosques. Now before you get a fitty about me being anti-Muslim or something that's not my rant here at all: they are just so-so old mosques and aren't worth to be WH. The state party basically just spun this into "many people lived her over many years as you can see by religious devoted", well, that's not special and many places in the world have old, better, and more valuable mosques (or other cultural buildings). So, big thumbs down but whatcha gonna do - don't expect anything special on your day tour around Djerba and enjoy the beach resorts instead! Previous review for the tentative site is below.

====

Absolutely horrible. Djerba is great for beach resorts but trying to include the crappy traces of archeology around is just pathetic. I would give it half a star. That "thing" in the top right corner is actually a site! The Meninx remains may be sort of interesting but you only see these symmetrically placed rocks... Seriously?! If you are on Djerba with a car then by all means have a look around but doing a tour, as I saw another couple do, is just a waste of money. You are better off visiting the Mos Eisley Cantina than mosques and towers.

Caspar Dechmann

1.00 Switzerland - 29-Jun-18 -

I visited Djerba for holidays in February of 2009. I was very surprised now when I saw that it was to be nominated as a WHS since I found the island neither very beautiful (it is totally flat) nor archeologically or architecturally interesting. I didn't even feel the need to take any pictures! We made a tour of the island and the most memorable place was the synagogue but even this didn't impress me much. More impressive was an excursion into the desert but naturally this was on the mainland. All in all it seemed very touristy and with few historic monuments. I doubt this has changed much since.