Tunisia Way

This museum is housed on the ground floor of an 18th-century palace, Dar Ben Abdallah, located in the heart of the medina (old city).
The palace includes three elements, a masters' house, where the museum is located, the guests' house, containing the museum administration, and the common rooms.

First transformed by the Directorate of Public Instruction and Fine Arts into the Bureau of Tunisian Arts, it was taken over in 1964 by the State Secretariat for Cultural Affairs (Directorate of National Museums) and chosen to house the Center for Traditional Arts and Customs. In 1977, that center was transferred to Carthage, and the museum was opened in 1978.

The museum presents traditional arts and customs of the city of Tunis, exhibited in the traditional setting of the private flat and the spacious kitchen that form a network opening onto a large patio.

Each "apartment," or large room, shows some of the rites of passage between the important stages in a lifetime - birth, the education of children, circumcision, engagement and marriage - and at the same time illustrates the life style of a family of the Tunisian upper classes in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The supports of the exhibition consist of furnishings (beds, benches, knick-knacks); human figures (reconstitutions of such ceremonial occasions as engagements and weddings); costumes; jewelry; women's toilet accessories (a constitution of a traditional Turkish bath); the kitchen (with traditional table service, copperware and ceramics); and the male child's education, through a reconstitution of a Koranic school (the kuttab).