A temporary exhibition will give visitors a sneak peak at Tunisia‘s expanded plans to renovate the shuttered national museum at the world heritage site in Carthage, Rome‘s ancient rival. The museum‘s rich collection comprises more than 100,000 pieces from the ancient city’s Punic, Roman, and Byzantine eras to the 20th century. However, it has been closed since 2018 because of structural instability and the pieces will not be on display before the museum’s official reopening scheduled for the end of 2026.
But until October, history lovers will be able to view a dozen of the museum’s mosaics and immerse themselves in the renovation plans entrusted to German firm Bez+Kock Architekten.
They are the winners of the “very first international architecture competition ever organised in Tunisia”, Ghada Jellali, an architect working on the museum’s renovation, told the news agency on June 20.
For decades, the curious had to gaze down from the bustling sidewalks rimming Largo Argentina (Argentina Square) to admire the temples below. That’s because, over the centuries, the city had been built up, layer by layer, to levels several meters above the area where Caesar masterminded his political strategies and was later fatally stabbed in 44 BC.
“At the onset of the project in 2019, it was only planned to renovate two rooms for 3.5 million euros ($3.8 million), but an assessment showed that it was impossible without addressing the rest of the buildings,” Jellali said. With European Union support, the project budget has climbed to 12 million euros, along with other foreign funding dedicated to the development of tourism and crafts at the Acropolis of Byrsa, the ruins of an ancient citadel which the museum was built upon in the northern suburbs of Tunis.
Work on the site is expected to start in June 2025.
Pauline Lecointe of Expertise France, a French public agency coordinating the technical work, says the site will be “rid of buildings from the ’90s devoid of historical interest and in an advanced state of disrepair”.
At the project’s completion, the museum will have three times more exhibition space (2,200 square metres) than before.
