Tunisia: Djerba Island Becomes UNESCO World Heritage Site

UNESCO has added the island of Djerba in Tunisia to the List of World Heritage Sites. The recognition was received during the 45th session of the World Heritage Committee held in Riyadh.

The island is one of the attractive sites of Tunisian tourism and, in addition to its famous beaches, offers a rich and varied historical heritage: from ancient ruins to typical white villages and places of worship. The dossier the candidacy was presented with was entitled “Djerba: a cultural landscape, evidence of a way to occupy the island territory.”

Djerba represents “evidence of a settlement pattern that emerged on the island around the 9th century AD in a semi-desert and water-poor environment. Its main feature was low population density: it involved the division of the island into clustered areas that were economically self-sufficient and connected to each other and to the island’s religious and trading sites by a complex network of roads. A typical settlement of Djerba, which arose from a combination of environmental, sociocultural, and economic factors, shows how the local population adapted their way of life to the conditions of their shallow natural environment,” says the UNESCO website.

In Tunisia, UN-protected properties also include the El Jem Amphitheater, the archaeological site of Carthage, the Medina of Tunisia, the Ixquel National Park, the Punic city of Kerkouan and its necropolis, Kairouan, the Medina of Sousa, and Dougga.