Photos

View from a decorative window - Mausoleum and Mosque of Hammouda Pacha
(I took the photo of a business house's roof)

The Mausoleum of Hammouda Pacha in Tunis is a square building with a green-tiled pyramidal roof (1665). Adjoining is the Mosque of Hammouda Pacha (c. 1665), which has an octagonal minaret in Syrian style, one of the finest minarets in Tunis.

The mosque was built between 1654 and 1655 by Hammuda (Muhammed) Pasha (d. 1696), who succeeded his father as the Ottoman governor of Tunisia in 1631 and left his post to his son in 1662. It is located inside a walled courtyard at the southeast corner of Sidi ben Arus and Kasbah streets. A tomb was added within the precinct between 1685 and 1686 for the founder and his family. The architect of the ensemble is Muhammed Nigro of Cordoba.

The mosque is aligned with the two streets and with qibla, along the northwest-southeast axis. The rectangular prayer hall is accessed through a narrow courtyard that envelops it on three sides, except for qibla, to the southeast. Three portals -- a main portal facing northwest on Kasbah street, a side portal facing northeast and a third portal at the eastern corner -- lead into the courtyard, which is raised several steps from the street level to even out the natural slope of the site. A large part of the courtyard is shaded by the portico that wraps the prayer hall, which is mirrored along the northeast courtyard wall to delineate an overflow prayer area with an outdoor mihrab. Both the arcade and the portico feature columns with a variety of capitals carrying horseshoe and round arches.

The prayer hall is entered from through seven iron doors set in archways. Of the three portals on the main façade, the central entrance is distinguished with a black and white marble arch set inside a frame of interlocking hexagons. Inside, the hypostyle prayer hall is seven bays wide and five bays deep and measures 26.5 by 16.5 meters. It is roofed with six trough vaults and a central barrel vault that terminate at the qibla aisle, which is crowned with a raised dome above the mihrab, flanked by two transverse trough vaults and corner cross-vaults. Its horseshoe arches are carried on twenty four free-standing and twenty engaged marble columns with identical capitals bearing volutes and crescent motifs.

Tunis

Tunis (Arabic: تونس‎, Tūnis) is the capital of the Tunisian Republic and also the Tunis Governorate, with a population of 1,200,000 in 2008. It is Tunisia's largest city.
Situated on a large Mediterranean gulf, (the Gulf of Tunis), behind the Lake of Tunis and the port of La Goulette (Halq al Wadi), the city extends along the coastal plain and the hills that surround it. At the centre of more modern development (colonial era and post) lies the old medina. Beyond this section lie the suburbs of Carthage, La Marsa, and Sidi Bou Said.
The medina is found at the centre of the city: a dense agglomeration of alleys and covered passages, full of intense scents and colours, boisterous and active trade, a surfeit of goods on offer ranging from leather to plastic, tin to the finest filigree, tourist souvenirs to the works of tiny crafts-shops.
As the capital city of the country Tunis is the center of Tunisian commercial activity, as well as focus of political and administrative life in the country. The expansion of the Tunisian economy in the last decades is reflected in the booming development of the outer city where one can see clearly the social challenges brought about by rapid modernization in Tunisia. (Source: planetware & tunisguide & wikipedia)