TRIP OVERVIEW
Day 1 – Kasbah of Hammamet · Medina of Hammamet · Pupput Archaeological Site
Day 2 – Kelibia Fort · Kerkouane Archaeological Site
Day 3 – Bardo National Museum · Medina of Tunis · Sidi Bou Said
Day 4 – Great Mosque of Kairouan · Aghlabid Basins · Zawiya of Sidi Sahib
Day 5 · Train Day · El Jem
Day 1
1.Kasbah of Hammamet~45 min
A 13th-century fort raised on Byzantine foundations at the edge of the medina, its ramparts the only place in town to walk above the rooftops and out over the sea.
2.Medina of Hammamet~30 min
Whitewashed lanes and a 13th-century circuit of sea walls built up through the 15th century, small enough to cross on foot in twenty minutes and still the town's working old quarter.
Open 24/7
3.Pupput Archaeological Site~1 hr
A Roman colonia raised to city status under Commodus, its bathhouse floors and the House of the Figured Peristyle still carrying their mosaics in the open air where they were found.
Day 2
1.Kelibia Fort~1 hr
A Greek settlement, then a Carthaginian stronghold, rebuilt into the square Byzantine citadel that still crowns this 150m headland, with the uninterrupted Mediterranean view its ramparts are famous for.
2.Kerkouane Archaeological Site~1 hr
A Phoenician town abandoned during the First Punic War around 250 BC and left untouched ever since, its house foundations, dye workshops and bathtubs the clearest surviving picture of how a Punic city actually lived.
Day 3
1.Bardo National Museum~2 hr
A 19th-century Husainid palace turned museum, its halls given over almost entirely to the largest assembled collection of Roman mosaics anywhere in the world, lifted whole from villas across Tunisia.
2.Medina of Tunis~1.5 hr
A UNESCO-listed old city whose 8th-century street plan survives block for block, its souks, some 700 monuments and the Zitouna Mosque packed inside walls a visitor can still cross end to end on foot.
Open 24/7
3.Sidi Bou Said~1.5 hr
A clifftop village kept blue-and-white by a 1915 decree, its cobbled lanes, studded doors and Café des Délices terrace looking straight down over the Gulf of Tunis.
Open 24/7
Day 4
1.Great Mosque of Kairouan~1 hr
Founded in 670 AD and rebuilt in its present form by the Aghlabids, the oldest mosque in North Africa and the template its own vast courtyard, striped arcades and squat minaret set for every Maghrebi mosque after it.
2.Aghlabid Basins~30 min
Built between 860 and 862 to supply a city with no river nearby, a settling basin feeding a 128m-wide main reservoir fed by a 36km aqueduct — the most important hydraulic engineering the medieval Muslim world left standing.
Open 24/7
3.Zawiya of Sidi Sahib~45 min
Known as the Mosque of the Barber for the companion of the Prophet buried here with three hairs from his beard, a 17th-century shrine, madrasa and mausoleum wrapped in Andalusian zellij tilework and carved plaster.
Day 5
Hammamet → El Jem · SNCFT via Bir Bou Regba · 3 hr 15 min
book at: SNCFT
Morning departure · Bir Bou Regba → El Jem
Midday departure · Bir Bou Regba → El Jem
Afternoon departure · Bir Bou Regba → El Jem
1.Amphitheatre of El Jem~1.5 hr
Raised around 238 AD in what was then Thysdrus, the third-largest amphitheatre the Romans ever built and the best-preserved anywhere outside Italy, its arena, tiers and underground animal galleries all still open to walk through.
El Jem → Hammamet · SNCFT via Bir Bou Regba · 3 hr 45 min
book at: SNCFT
Midday departure · El Jem → Bir Bou Regba
Afternoon departure · El Jem → Bir Bou Regba
Evening departure · El Jem → Bir Bou Regba
Tours
Viator
1. Private Tour: Medina · Carthage · Sidi Bou Said · Bardo Museum + Lunch · Viator · 4.8 · 234+ reviews
A private driver-guide covers Tunis's Bardo mosaics, the Medina, Carthage's ruins and the blue-and-white lanes of Sidi Bou Said in one day, with lunch included and the pace set by the group alone.
8 hr · Private, any size
↔
A shared or small-group version of the same four-stop Tunis day, run by a registered guide fluent in several languages; reviewers single out the drivers and the pacing across the mosque, museum and coastal village.
8 hr · Small group
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A private car-and-guide combination that pairs the Great Mosque of Kairouan with the El Jem amphitheatre and the harbour town of Monastir in a single inland loop, covering in one day a route that otherwise needs two.
8 hr · Private, any size
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A private inland run to two of Tunisia's best-preserved Roman sites, Dougga and Bulla Regia, by way of the Andalusian town of Testour, for travellers who have already covered the coast and want the ruins without a crowd.
9 hr · Private, any size
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Cappuccino
Cafe Sidi Bou Hdid · 4.0 · 2000+ reviews
Restaurants Near Hotel
Adra
Tunisian and regional local cuisine, in the hotel's second restaurant alongside the buffet room.
In the hotel
Daily 7:00pm - 10:30pm
Restaurant Dalili · 4.3 · 385+ reviews
Tunisian and international family-restaurant menu, from grilled meats to pizza and pasta, on the main tourist road.
Daily 8:30am - 11:30pm
Downtown Restaurants
Rooh El Medina · 4.4 · 460+ reviews
A lounge-restaurant facing the medina gate, serving Tunisian standards alongside burgers, pizza and the local makloub sandwich in a plant-filled courtyard.
Daily 7:00am - 2:00am
Local Tastes
Brik à l'oeuf
A thin malsouka pastry folded around a whole egg, parsley and sometimes tuna or minced meat, then deep-fried until the sheet shatters and the yolk stays runny inside.
Tunisian Mint Tea with Pine Nuts
Strong green tea poured over sugar and fresh mint, finished with a scatter of toasted pine nuts floating on top — the standard after-meal drink across every café in the country.
Harissa
A chili paste built from dried Nabeul-region peppers, garlic, caraway and olive oil, spooned onto nearly everything and sold in small jars in every Tunisian market and supermarket.
Food Delivery
Glovo
Foreign number: accepted — the sign-up form takes any country code, but the SMS code can be slow or fail to arrive on some foreign carriers; a local SIM improves reliability.
The only delivery platform with real coverage in the Nabeul-Hammamet area, partnering with around seven restaurants near the main tourist strip; the menu and restaurant list thin out fast once you move away from Route Touristique.
Getting Around
inDrive
Foreign number: accepted — sign-up verifies by SMS or WhatsApp through Twilio's global delivery network, which reaches most foreign carriers reliably.
The only ride-hailing app with a real presence in Hammamet since Bolt's recent exit from Tunisia; riders and drivers negotiate the fare directly in the app, so expect to counter-offer once or twice, and waits run longer than in Tunis.
Train Stations Near Hotel
Hammamet
Local line to Bir Bou Regba and Nabeul, with a change at Bir Bou Regba onto the Tunis-Sousse-Sfax mainline.
Bir Bou Regba
The junction station for the Tunis-Sousse-Sfax mainline, with direct SNCFT service to Tunis, Sousse and El Jem.
Day Trips by Train
Nabeul · 25 min
A short hop up the same branch line to Tunisia's pottery town, known for its ceramics workshops and the Neapolis Roman ruins on its outskirts.
book at: SNCFT
Tunis · 1 hr
The capital's Medina, Bardo mosaics and the blue village of Sidi Bou Said sit within reach of Tunis Ville station, on the same line via Bir Bou Regba that every day-tripper already uses.
book at: SNCFT
Worth Knowing
Hammamet is a beach base, not a museum city — the real sightseeing happens on day trips
None of the international hotel chains that anchor most GuideMyDays picks have a property here: Marriott, Hilton and Hyatt's closest Tunisia footholds are in Tunis, Sousse and Monastir, and even second-tier Radisson Blu sits several kilometres from the old town. Every hotel in this guide is either independent or a European resort brand, which is simply what the Hammamet market offers.
Kerkouane, on Day 2, is unusual among Mediterranean ruins for what did not happen to it: abandoned during the First Punic War around 250 BC, it was never resettled or rebuilt by the Romans, so its house plans and dye-workshops survive as genuinely Punic rather than a Roman city built on Punic foundations.
The historic core of Hammamet — the Kasbah and Medina — is small enough to see on foot in half a day, which is exactly why this guide pairs it with Pupput's Roman ruins rather than padding Day 1 with a fourth in-town stop that does not exist.
El Jem's amphitheatre, saved for the last day here, sits on the same Tunis-Sousse-Sfax railway line as Hammamet's own station — but reaching it means changing trains at Bir Bou Regba, since Hammamet itself is only on the shorter branch line to Tunis and Nabeul.
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