Getting lost in the medina, on purpose

By my third visit to the medina of Tunis I had walked the sensible route often enough to have it memorised: Bab Bhar to Rue Jamaa Zitouna, the perfumers’ souk, the mosque courtyard, a rooftop café to finish. It’s a good route. It’s also, after a few repeats, a route rather than a place. So on that third visit I put the map away at Souk el-Attarine, picked whichever alley looked narrower than the one before it, and didn’t check my bearings again for two hours. This is what happened, and why I’d recommend doing the same at least once.

Why the sensible route stops working after a while

A structured first pass through the medina makes sense — the walking route through the medina of Tunis exists because a UNESCO-listed old city with something like 700 monuments packed into a few hundred metres genuinely needs a starting scaffold or you see almost nothing coherently. But a route, followed twice, starts to feel like a script. You know which turn leads to the leather souk before you take it, which courtyard opens onto the mosque, which café has the good rooftop. The medina stops surprising you, which is a strange thing to say about a place built to disorient, and it happens faster than you’d expect once you’ve internalised even a rough mental map.

Where	Medina of Tunis, inside the former ramparts
Cost	Free to wander; individual dar palaces and museums charge 5–12 TND (about €1.50–3.50)
Time needed	No fixed time — that’s rather the point of this particular exercise
Getting there	Metro léger or taxi to Bab Bhar / Place de la Victoire
Best time	Mid-morning on a weekday, avoiding Friday prayer time around the main mosque

What actually happens when you stop navigating

The first thing that changes is pace. Without a destination, you slow down without meaning to, because there’s no reason to hurry toward anything in particular. The second is attention: doorways I’d walked past twice before, on the scripted route, suddenly became worth stopping at — carved wooden lintels, tiled thresholds, the small brass hands of Fatima on studded blue doors that I’d photographed elsewhere without registering how common the motif actually is here. Neither of these things was new to the medina. They were new to me, because I’d finally stopped looking for the next landmark long enough to see what was actually in front of me.

The alleys themselves reward this more than I expected. Away from the main spine of Rue Jamaa Zitouna, the medina fragments into residential lanes that don’t lead anywhere touristic at all — laundry strung overhead, a carpenter’s workshop taking up half a passage, kids on bicycles moving faster through the gaps than seemed physically possible. None of it is staged for visitors, which is obvious the moment you’re in it and impossible to convey from a guidebook description.

The moment I actually got lost, properly

About ninety minutes in, I lost any sense of which direction Bab Bhar lay in — not vaguely lost, properly turned around, in a knot of alleys somewhere north of where I’d started. I want to be honest that this was mildly stressful for about ten minutes before it stopped being stressful, mostly because the medina is smaller than it feels from inside it and every few minutes produces either a landmark (a minaret, a gate) or a shopkeeper willing to point a direction. I asked twice, in bad French, and got clear enough answers both times to correct course without ever fully retracing my steps.

Moment	What I felt	What actually happened
First 30 minutes off-route	Curious, slightly self-conscious	Found a working carpentry souk with no signage at all
60–90 minutes in	Genuinely unsure of direction	Two wrong turns, one dead end, no real danger
Asking for directions	Awkward in broken French	Clear, friendly answers both times
Emerging near Souk el-Grana	Relief, then mild disappointment it was over	Recognised the street immediately

Where wandering has real limits

It’s worth being clear that “getting lost on purpose” works within a fairly contained, well-populated old city during daylight, not as a general travel principle. The medina of Tunis is busy enough, most hours, that you’re rarely more than a minute from another person, and the layout — while confusing — is bounded by the old ramparts and a handful of recognisable landmarks that eventually reorient you. I wouldn’t apply the same approach after dark, or in quieter residential pockets late in the evening, and I’d think twice about doing it solo on a Friday around prayer time near the main mosque, when foot traffic patterns change and some streets around Ez-Zitouna are busier or quieter than usual depending on the hour.

For the more structural questions — what’s actually open to non-Muslims, which dar palaces are worth the entry fee — the Ez-Zitouna mosque visitor guide and the palaces and dar museums of the medina guide are worth reading before, not during, an aimless walk.

Buying nothing, on purpose, in the souks

One side effect of wandering without a plan is that you drift out of the souks built around tourist purchases — leather, spices arranged for photographs — and into ones that clearly aren’t selling to you at all: hardware, fabric offcuts, secondhand kitchenware, a whole stretch dedicated to what looked like plumbing fittings. I didn’t buy anything in any of them, and that was rather the appeal; it’s the version of the medina that exists regardless of whether a single tourist ever walks through it, and it’s a useful corrective if the souvenir-souk stretch near Bab Bhar has started to feel like the whole medina.

For the sections that are genuinely worth buying from, the souks of Tunis and what is actually worth buying and bargaining in a Tunisian souk without getting it wrong cover that side properly. The gates and painted doors of the medina guide is worth reading too, since half of what makes aimless wandering rewarding is noticing the doorways rather than the shops behind them.

Other medinas, once Tunis stops feeling unfamiliar

Once the layout logic of one old Tunisian medina clicks, it transfers surprisingly well to the others, even though each has its own character. Sousse’s medina, walled and compact around its ribat, invites the same kind of aimless wandering on a smaller scale, and a private trip to Kantaoui, Sousse medina and Hergla is a reasonable way to see how a different coastal medina handles the same basic shape — narrow lanes, a central religious building, souks radiating outward — differently from Tunis.

Hammamet’s smaller medina, folded into its old town near the coast, rewards a similarly unhurried pass; a Dar Sebastien and medina tour in Hammamet pairs the old town with a garden and cultural centre most visitors wouldn’t find unguided.

And if you’re extending south along the Sahel coast, a full-day tour of Sousse and Monastir with their ribat and medina covers two more old towns built on the same defensive logic, a useful comparison once Tunis’s medina no longer feels like the only version of the idea. None of these replace a first visit to Tunis’s own old city, covered in the medina of Kairouan and medina of Sousse and its ribat guides if you want the fuller picture before booking.

Frequently asked questions about wandering the Tunis medina

Is it actually safe to get lost in the medina on purpose?

During the day, yes, for most visitors, since the medina is compact, busy and bounded by recognisable landmarks. I wouldn’t recommend the same approach after dark or in the quieter residential pockets late in the evening.

How do you find your way back if you genuinely don’t know which direction to go?

Ask a shopkeeper rather than trying to retrace your steps blindly — most speak enough French to point you toward the nearest recognisable landmark, usually Ez-Zitouna’s minaret or one of the main gates.

Should I do a guided walk before trying this alone?

A short guided or self-led route on an earlier visit helps considerably. The walking route through the medina of Tunis is a reasonable first pass to build that mental map before wandering off it.

What’s the best time of day for this kind of aimless walk?

Mid-morning on a weekday, once the earliest deliveries have cleared but before the midday heat and the busiest browsing hours set in.

Are there parts of the medina worth deliberately avoiding while wandering?

Purely residential alleys late in the evening are worth skipping, more out of respect for people’s homes than any real safety concern. During the day, most areas are fine to walk through.

Do other Tunisian medinas work the same way for this kind of wandering?

Broadly yes — Sousse, Kairouan and Hammamet all have old towns built around a similar logic of gates, a central religious building and souks radiating outward, though each has its own scale and character.

What should I do if I can’t find my way out before it gets dark?

Head toward the nearest minaret or gate you can see above the rooflines, or ask directly for “Bab Bhar” or “Zitouna,” both of which most residents recognise instantly regardless of language. A rooftop café is also a good way to re-orient visually before continuing on foot.

Is it worth bringing a phone with offline maps as a safety net?

Yes — I didn’t rely on mine during the wander itself, but having it charged and loaded with an offline map of the medina was a reasonable backup I was glad to have, even unused.

Did getting lost change how you saw the rest of the city?

It did — it made me trust the structured routes less as the only way to see a place properly, which carried over into how I explored Sousse and Kairouan’s old towns later in the same trip.