Our Mediterranean Africa

Abstract

La Goulette is one of the 19 zones of Grand Tunis, the most densely populated metropolis of Tunisia with almost two and a half million of citizens. La Goulette, built up around the canal that connects the lagoon to the sea, has hosted the most prominent Italian community that settled in Tunis. In 1893, the construction of the port of Tunis attracted in La Goulette numerous traders: dockworkers and small merchants settled here, in particular mechanics and auto parts dealers, of Sardinian and Sicilian origin. To the precariousness of houses also corresponded a disordered urban design. The landscape that thus originated was extraordinarily similar to landscapes that can be found in the Sicilian coasts, in proximity of ports, of small towns and fisherman’s villages. The neighborhood was symbolically named Petite Sicile, as Sicily mirrored herself in these spontaneous forms of architecture, in the thick intertwining of houses and social relationships, in the way of living “in the streets” of children and, of course, in the food.