The Northwest

Before Rome, the northwest was the heartland of the Numidian kingdom, whose Berber kings allied with and fought against Carthage. Thugga, today's Dougga, was a Numidian town with a mausoleum inscribed in both Punic and Libyco-Berber script, and Bulla Regia carries the title of a royal seat in its name. After Carthage fell, Rome absorbed the region, and the wheatlands of the Medjerda valley made it one of the empire's granaries. Dougga, Bulla Regia, Mactaris (Makthar) and Sicca Veneria (Le Kef) grew into prosperous Roman towns, and the quarries at Chemtou supplied a prized yellow marble to Rome.

After the Arab conquest the region remained rural, with Le Kef its fortified centre on the frontier towards Algeria. In the 17th century Moriscos expelled from Spain settled in the Medjerda valley, founding or rebuilding towns such as Testour. Genoese merchants held the island of Tabarka from the 16th to the 18th century for its coral fishery and built the fort that still stands.

Under the French protectorate, settlers took over large estates in the valleys, the forests of the Kroumirie were exploited for cork, and railways were built for grain and mineral ores. The protectorate began here, when French troops crossed from Algeria in 1881, citing raids by Kroumir tribesmen. In 1943 the hills of the region saw heavy fighting during the Tunisian campaign.

The northwest is agricultural and conservative, with strong ties to the soil and to the Algerian side of the border, where families and dialects overlap. The Kroumirie highlanders have a tradition of forest life — cork cutting, charcoal making and herding — while the plains are wheat country. Le Kef, the largest town of the High Tell, has a proud cultural life and a history as a Sufi centre.

Testour keeps the memory of its Andalusian settlers: its Great Mosque has a minaret in Spanish style, and the town hosts a festival of malouf, the Andalusian-rooted classical music. Tabarka has built a festival scene too, with a jazz festival and summer music on the seafront, and its craftsmen work the red coral once fished off the coast.

Weddings, harvest celebrations and saints' festivals punctuate the calendar, and the region's women weave rugs and blankets in regional patterns.

The northwest is thinly urbanised. Béja, Jendouba and Le Kef are market and administrative towns of a few tens of thousands each, and Siliana and Tabarka are smaller still. Many villages have shrunk as young people moved to Tunis and the coast, and the governorates have some of the country's highest poverty rates.

Work is mostly in farming: wheat and barley in the Medjerda valley and around Béja, sugar beet, olives, livestock and dairy. The dams on the Medjerda and its tributaries, such as Sidi Salem, supply water to much of northern Tunisia, and cork and timber come from the Kroumirie. Tabarka and Aïn Draham live partly on tourism, especially Tunisian and Algerian visitors in summer.

Days follow the farming calendar, with the grain harvest in early summer, and weekly markets are the centre of rural life. Unemployment, poor roads in the hills and drought years that cut the harvest are the constant concerns.

This is the country's breadbasket, and bread, semolina and couscous are at the centre of the table. Le Kef is known for borzgane, a festive couscous served with lamb, dried fruit and nuts in milk, and the region's women hand-roll couscous and make hlalem, small handmade pasta, for soups. Tabarka adds fish and seafood.

The forests and hills give wild mushrooms, honey, chestnuts and game, and olive oil and sheep and goat cheeses come from farms around Béja and Le Kef. Thibar, near Béja, gave its name to thibarine, a sweet herbal liqueur first made by monks of the White Fathers mission there.

Tea, coffee and sweet pastries are served on every visit, and grilled lamb and merguez are standard at roadside stops along the valley roads.

The Roman cities are the region's great draw. Dougga, a UNESCO World Heritage Site above the Tebersouk valley, has the Capitol, the theatre, temples, baths, houses with mosaics and the Libyco-Punic mausoleum. Bulla Regia, near Jendouba, is famous for its underground villas, where mosaics survive in the rooms where they were laid. Chemtou's marble quarries and museum lie nearby, and Makthar, in Siliana governorate, has its forum, arch and baths.

Tabarka has the Genoese fort, a small harbour, and beaches, with coral diving offshore. Behind it, the road climbs through cork-oak forests of the Kroumirie to Aïn Draham, a centre for walks and hunting.

Le Kef has its kasbah, Roman baths and a museum of traditional arts in an 18th-century mausoleum, and near Kalaat Senan, in the same governorate, rises the flat-topped Table de Jugurtha, a mesa with steps cut into the rock. The Medjerda, the country's main river, crosses the region from the Algerian border past Jendouba and Béja to Testour and the Sidi Salem dam.