Túnez :: Comparisson reports

“We also see the entrances to the baths and mosques which stand out from the multitude. The bathhouses are simple buildings where Arabs cool off in a warm and steamy atmosphere. You can normally find fantastic images of animals, boats and other similar things on the walls, a reminiscence of the French.

There are many mosques in Tunis; some are truly pretty and artistic on the outside, normally covered in different coloured marble plates or with colourful tiles decorating the walls. But, the octagonal minarets are especially very elegant, an apt shape found between the heavy square towers of northwest Africa and the slender, column-like minarets found in the Orient. You can often look through the mosque doors and see the patio surrounded by arches, sometimes even seeing the sanctuary decorated with lamps in the back. Everything else is forbidden to foreign eyes; Jews and French can’t even near the forecourt.”

Archduke Ludwig Salvator of Austria, Tunis. Ein bild aus dem nordafrikanischen leben, Heinrich Mercy, Prague, 1870