Museum of arts and traditions of Kef

The Museum of Arts and Traditions of Kef is installed on the heights of the city, in a former sanctuary, this museum has been endowed with both an anthropological and ethnographic dimension to reflect and explain the artisanal and intangible heritage of a region. rich in traditions where sedentary life and nomadism, urbanity and rurality mingle.

In a succession of rooms opening onto each other before leading to the courtyard of a traditional residence whose rooms have been converted into showrooms for various craft activities, the museum allows us to access the world of nomadic tribes around the city of Kef, but also to the intimacy of the domestic, professional and spiritual life of the city itself, which has always been the capital of this region of northwestern Tunisia and its center of activity economic and religious.

In the courtyard of the museum there is one of the best preserved Islamic sundials in Tunisia. Previously located in the Great Mosque of Kef, it was moved when the latter was rebuilt in the lower part of the city, to free up the Byzantine trough building that it housed.

The first room is square in plan, covered with a dome pierced with small windows, it is the most beautiful room in the museum: its walls are covered with ceramic panels and finely chiseled tuc plates. Floral motifs and reproductions of the different names of Allah decorate the walls. On the corners are calligraphic the names of Allah and Muhammad. In the second room also of square plan and surmounted by a small dome resting on four columns, this room is the old mosque. It has kept its old mihrab decorated with a decoration engraved on stucco.

In the third room of construction close to that of the first room, it is the Koranic school. The exhibited collections are related to equestrian activities. You can thus admire richly decorated saddles or a collection of rifles and powder gourds and the fourth room is in fact a covered passage with multiple small rooms where everyday objects and crafts are displayed. . Many pieces of pottery are presented there as well as their manufacturing techniques. There is also a rich collection of household utensils as well as incense burners and smokers for bees.