About This Museum
Bardo National Museum is Housed for over a century in the heart of a beylical palace. It is Tunisia’s oldest museum and the largest in the world by its number of mosaics. It contains thousands of objects collected during excavations conducted across the country, displayed in about fifty rooms and galleries that trace Tunisia’s history from prehistory to the mid-20th century.
The museum owes its worldwide fame to its mosaic collection, considered the richest, most varied, and most refined. Among its finest pieces are the paintings depicting Virgil surrounded by muses, the floor showing Dionysus offering the vine to Ikarios, and the mosaic celebrating the triumph of Neptune.
Bardo National Museum : Major treasures
Beyond mosaics, the Bardo houses extraordinary pieces from other eras. The “hermaïon” – a conical altar from the Mousterian era (-40,000 years) made of over 4,000 flints, bones, and limestone balls – is considered one of humanity’s earliest spiritual expressions.
From the Punic period, highlights include a superb solid gold armor of a Campanian warrior, jewels, and the stele of a priest carrying a child to sacrifice. The Greek collection was enriched by excavations off the coast of Mahdia in the 1940s, recovering a 1.20 m bronze Agôn from a 1st-century shipwreck.
The Roman period provides most of the Bardo collections: mosaics, statuary, pottery, jewellery, coins, and everyday objects. The Islamic department, set in Arab-Islamic decor, displays manuscripts, jewellery, carved stones and wood, along with objects that belonged to the ruling family and a room dedicated to Jewish worship.
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Frequently Asked Questions
The Bardo National Museum in Tunis holds the world's largest and finest collection of ancient Roman mosaics, assembled from archaeological sites across Tunisia. Its approximately 50 rooms of mosaics include masterpieces from Carthage, Dougga, El Jem, and dozens of other sites, making it an unmissable destination for anyone interested in Roman art.
The museum is housed in a former beylical palace in the Le Bardo neighbourhood of Tunis, about 4 km west of the city centre. It is accessible by metro (line 4 to Bardo station) or by taxi from central Tunis.
Among the most celebrated works are the Virgil mosaic (showing the poet flanked by the Muses Clio and Melpomene), the Triumph of Dionysus and Ikarios mosaic, the Triumph of Neptune mosaic from Sousse, and the life-size Bronze Agôn statue recovered from an ancient shipwreck.
The museum's prehistoric collection includes a carved stone altar estimated to date from approximately 40,000 years ago, found at Sidi Zin in northern Tunisia. The collection spans from Palaeolithic prehistory through the Islamic period.
A thorough visit takes three to four hours. The museum is large and the mosaic rooms can be overwhelming in their richness; many visitors choose to focus on particular periods or highlights. Audio guides are available in several languages.
The museum is generally closed on Mondays. Opening hours vary by season; summer hours typically extend into the evening. Entry fees apply; photography charges may be additional.
