UNESCO has announced that it will include the heritage of the Tunisian island of Djerba on its world heritage list, a tourist hotspot which is home to Carthaginian ruins.
Ancient ruins, whitewashed villages, mosques, churches and synagogues: the rich heritage of the tourist island of Djerba in southern Tunisia was included on UNESCO’s world list on Monday, the organization announced .
“The committee of UNESCO member states meeting in Riyadh has just approved the inclusion of the heritage of the island of Djerba on the world heritage list”, rejoiced Eric Falt, regional director of UNESCO in the Maghreb. Djerba, which covers 514 square kilometers, is the largest island in North Africa. Its landscape is a combination of desert areas bordering the sea and fields cultivated with palm and olive trees.
Considered the mythological island where, in Homer’s Odyssey, Ulysses and his navigators encounter the Lotophages (lotus eaters), Djerba also served as the backdrop for certain scenes on the planet Tatooine in the Star Wars saga.
A great diversity of heritage
The Tunisian Ministry of Cultural Affairs welcomed the“final acceptance” of Djerba, considering that it “does justice to joint efforts” authorities and civil society. Evoking a “long and winding path” having resulted in this inscription, the regional director of UNESCO specified that it concerns “seven areas of the island and 24 monuments”.
Djerba is home to Carthaginian and Roman ruins but also traditional houses called “houch”, organized around an interior courtyard and equipped with ingenious systems to collect rainwater.
The island, renowned for its religious diversity, has churches, synagogues including the Ghriba – the oldest synagogue in Africa – and fortified Ibadi mosques, a separate branch of Islam, some of which are underground. Djerba is also home to typical markets called “souks” and a pretty medina in Houm Soukt.
“A unique settlement pattern”
Former Tunisian Minister of Tourism René Trabelsi, a Djerbian by birth, welcomed the inscription of his island as a UNESCO world heritage site to AFP. “It is the result of extraordinary work, carried out with love, it rewards the work of many people”did he declare.
Djerba represents “an exceptional testimony to a unique settlement pattern and a remarkable human adaptation, over the centuries, to the constraints of an environment marked by water scarcity and numerous threats from the sea”, estimated Mr. Falt from UNESCO Maghreb. He recalled that the last inscription of a Tunisian world heritage site dated from 1997 with the archaeological site of Dougga.
Nine Tunisian UNESCO World Heritage Sites
Djerba “it is not a desert island, it is a living heritage: it is the island of living together, of tolerance and peace, it is an island apart, an example for the whole world”, added Mr. Trabelsi. Tunisia now has nine UNESCO World Heritage sites including the medinas of Tunis and Sousse, the city of Kairouan, the Punic-Roman site of Carthage and the amphitheater of El Jem.
This summer, Djerba received thousands of tourists despite an attack during the Ghriba Jewish pilgrimage that left five people dead in May. “The synagogue is visited by 1,500 to 2,000 tourists every day”said Mr. Trabelsi, adding that he “a thought of course for the people who died during the shooting”.