Sousse is the major city on Tunisia's east coast and the 'pearl of the Sahel': a lively port city that combines the bustle of a real Tunisian city with one of the most impressive medieval medinas in the country and long beaches of golden sand. It's a destination that lets you alternate culture and sun, history and swimming, without travelling far.
Its historic centre, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1988, is walled and dominated by two gems of Islamic military architecture: the ribat, a 9th-century fortress-monastery whose tower overlooks the whole city, and the kasbah, home to a superb Archaeological Museum with one of the best collections of Roman mosaics in the country. In between lie alleys, souks, the Great Mosque and the everyday life of a medina that is still the heart of the city.
This guide explores Sousse with a practical eye: what to see in the medina and its monuments, which are the best beaches, how to use the Sahel suburban train to visit Monastir and Mahdia, how to get away to the amphitheatre of El Jem or the holy city of Kairouan, and where to eat and stay. Soberly, the guide also recalls that in 2015 the city suffered a serious attack on one of its tourist beaches; today Sousse has regained its pulse and remains one of the country's great destinations.
Sousse is one of the oldest cities in Tunisia: it was founded by the Phoenicians around the 9th century BC under the name Hadrumetum, and became an important Punic port, an ally and later a base for Hannibal during the Second Punic War. Under Rome it was a prosperous city in the province of Africa, rich in villas and mosaics, and later a Christian see. After the Vandal and Byzantine periods, with the arrival of Islam it became a key stronghold: in the 9th century, under the Aghlabid dynasty (the same as Kairouan's), the ribat and the Great Mosque were built, and the city — then called Susa — served as the port for the religious capital of Kairouan. Its medieval medina, with the ribat, the kasbah and the walls, is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Under the French protectorate and after independence, Sousse grew as an industrial, port and, above all, tourist city. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The central-eastern coastal strip, heart of Tunisia's olive country and cradle of its politicians: Sousse and Monastir with their medieval ribats, the colossal amphitheatre of El Jem and Bourguiba's home town, among beaches and harbours.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Sousse is one of the oldest cities in Tunisia, with almost three thousand years of history. The Phoenicians founded it around the 9th century BC under the name Hadrumetum (or Hadrumète). Tradition places its founding at about the same time as Carthage itself. Its magnificent bay and its position on the fertile central coast soon made it an important trading port of the Punic world.
Hadrumetum began as a Phoenician colony and later became a Punic city under the influence of Carthage. It prospered on sea trade, olive oil, grain and the produce of its rich farming region, the Sahel. It was one of the main cities of Carthaginian North Africa, with its own port, its temples and a busy commercial life.
Its moment in the great sweep of history came during the Second Punic War, the titanic struggle between Carthage and Rome. When the general Hannibal returned from Italy to defend his homeland against the Roman advance, Hadrumetum served as his base. It was from this area that Hannibal organised his forces before the decisive Battle of Zama (202 BC), where Scipio Africanus finally defeated him. Later, the city was shrewd enough to switch sides in time, which saved it from the destruction that Carthage suffered in 146 BC.
After the fall of Carthage, Hadrumetum flourished under Roman rule and became one of the richest and most populous cities in the province of Africa. Its wealth came from the farming of its fertile region (wheat and, above all, olive oil) and from sea trade. In time it became the capital of the province of Byzacena, one of the divisions of Roman Africa.
The magnificent Roman mosaics found in the city's villas and the surrounding area show how wealthy it was. Today they are on display in the Archaeological Museum in the kasbah, with high-quality mythological scenes, sea scenes and scenes of daily life. Hadrumetum had baths, forums, an amphitheatre and everything else a major Roman city would have.
The city was also an important centre of early Christianity. Its Christian community was active from the first centuries and dug a vast network of catacombs beneath the city. These are several kilometres of burial galleries with thousands of tombs, one of the largest early Christian sites in North Africa and comparable to those in Rome. Hadrumetum became a bishop's seat, a sign of its religious importance.
The decline of the Western Roman Empire brought hard times. The Vandals conquered the city in the 5th century, and the Byzantine Empire took it back in the 6th and fortified it. But the great change was still to come, with the arrival of Islam.
The Muslim conquest of North Africa in the 7th century transformed the city. It was badly damaged in the wars of conquest, then rebuilt and renamed Susa. Its great revival came in the 9th century under the Aghlabid dynasty. The Aghlabids ruled from nearby Kairouan, the new religious capital of Islam in the Maghreb, and they left some of their most iconic monuments in Susa.
Kairouan lies inland with no access to the sea, so Susa became its great port. The goods, armies and fleets of the Aghlabid capital came and went through Susa. To protect this strategic coast from attacks by sea, above all by the Byzantines who still held Sicily and the Mediterranean, the Aghlabids built a line of ribats, the fortress-monasteries of the Tunisian coast.
This was when the medina's great monuments went up. The ribat of Susa (late 8th century, rebuilt in the 9th) is today the best preserved in Tunisia, and its watchtower was used to send light signals. The Great Mosque (around 851) looks austere and fortified, a twin in spirit of the Great Mosque of Kairouan. The city was ringed with walls and given a kasbah with its lighthouse tower. This exceptional group of Aghlabid buildings has survived almost intact, and it is the reason the medina of Sousse became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1988.
Throughout the Middle Ages, Susa remained an important maritime and defensive stronghold of the Sahel under the dynasties that ruled Ifriqiya in turn (Fatimids, Zirids, Almohads, Hafsids). As a fortified port it stayed active in trade. It was also exposed to the ups and downs of a Mediterranean fought over by Muslims and Christians, with periods of prosperity and periods of siege.
In the early modern period, Tunisia became part of the Ottoman Empire and was in practice governed by local beys. Sousse carried on as a secondary port and trading town after the capital, living from fishing and from the trade in olive oil and Sahel produce. The city kept its walled medina and its seafaring character. It did not escape the bombardments and conflicts that shook the Tunisian coast, including attacks by European powers.
When France imposed its protectorate in 1881, Sousse was modernised. The port was developed, the railway arrived, a new town was laid out next to the medina, and the city grew into the economic centre of the Sahel. The region was densely populated and hard-working, and it also became a breeding ground for Tunisian nationalism. In fact Habib Bourguiba himself, the leader of the independence movement, came from neighbouring Monastir, in the heart of the Sahel. During the Second World War, Sousse, like the rest of the coast, was hit by the Tunisian campaign of 1942-1943.
After Tunisia's independence in 1956, Sousse grew fast and became the country's third city. It is one of Tunisia's main economic and industrial hubs, as well as a major university town and port. But tourism shaped its most visible growth. With its beaches, its climate and its extraordinary heritage, Sousse became one of Tunisia's great beach destinations. A long strip of hotels spread north, and in the 1980s the Port El Kantaoui resort was built.
That double identity, historic city and seaside resort, defines Sousse today. The World Heritage medina, with its ribat and its kasbah, sits alongside big resorts and the busy life of a real Tunisian city. Millions of European visitors have passed through its beaches over the decades.
Tourism took a dramatic blow in 2015. On 26 June that year, a terrorist attack on a beach in the Sousse hotel zone (Port El Kantaoui) killed dozens of foreign tourists. It was one of the worst attacks in the country's recent history and should be remembered soberly and with respect for the victims. The attack hit Tunisian tourism hard, as the sector had already been shaken that same year by the attack on the Bardo Museum. In the years that followed, Tunisia stepped up security and tourism gradually recovered.
Today Sousse has got its rhythm back and remains a lively, welcoming city, proud of its thousand-year-old medina and of being the pearl of the Sahel. Its history is Phoenician, Roman, Christian, Aghlabid, Ottoman and contemporary, which makes it an extraordinary summary of the many pasts that live side by side in Tunisia.
