Carthage Warnings Or Dangers

........of the Presidential Palace, which is right next to the site of the Antonine Baths.

It is a very nice piece of architecture, with some pretty bougainvilla etc, but the guards get very cross indeed if you take any photos at all. You can tell it's important by all the flags, and all the armed guards.

So I didn't take a photo of it.

This one is of the baths themselves.....much more interesting anyway, imo!

At the aqueduct site (where we had stopped for lunch at an on-site cafe) , after I had wandered along taking photos, I was approached quite aggressively by the 'guardien', a man who had been sitting in the shade.

He demanded 10 dinar (5GBP!) for the 'ticket'. Knowing (I thought) that this was not a ticketed site, I argued politely and then just walked away.

Talking to the tour guide reassured me that no, this was not a ticketed site and that the guardien should only be given a tip, at one's discretion.

There is a 'global' ticket for the excavated Carthaginian sites. I do not think this site is included, although I (and my guide) may be wrong.

I'd have happily given the guardien a tip if he had not been so aggressive (the only time i encountered this in Tunisia), but certainly not 10 dinar.

Prior to visiting the Antonine Baths, I had read that the Tunisian President's House or Palace and compound is right next to the historical park and that no one is allowed to photograph it. However, because of the compound's position, it is difficult not to include it (although at a distance) in some of your pictures. I had read that some people may have their film confiscated if security guards are of the mind to do so. I was so concerned about this happening that I removed my 2Gb disk which already had hundreds of pictures on it, and installed a clean 1Gb so that if it was confiscated it would have relatively very little on it!!

I needn't have worried after all, because even though I did get some of the compound's white walls, palace spires(?) and communication towers in the accompanying picture, no one approached me about it. It was really too distant to see anything much in my picture anyway. However, I would suggest that you shouldn't be foolish enough to purposefully take pictures, or walk closer than need be to the compound or attempt to scale the hill where the President's house is located, for your own personal safety.

I never was close enough to see what was close behind the wall, or what the triple windows or apertures in the wall were, but I wouldn't doubt that there were well-positioned security guards keeping tabs on everything around the compound.

(In the accompanying picture, see the long white wall punctuated by the spacing of what looks like 3 window-type apertures at intervals. )

Some of the ruins and antiquities one can visit are over 2000 years old and are not in the best of conditions anymore, since neither Phoenicians nor Romans can come back to fix them anymore. Hence it is a silly idea to climb onto the ruins and destroy them for others to see, or to get injured in the course of it.

Don't even think of coming too close to the presidential villa or you will meet some of the local guards with machine guns. Ths villa is close to the archeological sites, especially to the Antonine Baths. Also avoid taking photos in that direction as this may also attract the attention of the guards.

choose this page to advice yu about the word yu'll ear most of the time and in every corner of tunisia:
dinar.
the tunisian currency it is in did what they can say to travellers and foreigners in tunisia. buying or nor not be prepared with enough change of coins to give away. in my case, on the outskirts of carthage, a snapshot of the old man, cost me 1 dinar. no arm done thou'...