Purple Highlights Vegas

Sidi Bou Said, where he lived Ben Ali


A fabulous presidential palace was built by the deposed President Ben Ali near the town of Tunisia. Visit of 2005.

Sidi Bou Said. Or when a village, although having a clear tourism destination at the same time expresses the vocation of a people and a country.

Sidi Bou Saïd, a few miles north of Carthage, is the sea and the sky is. The land? The hides in its belly, as he can. There is the blue of the sea, there is the sky and the doors, windows, railings, frames, benches, streetlights, the dustbins, canopies, cover page, stalls ... Sometimes even the tiles and sidewalks. There is the blue, especially the balconies covered with wood which protected - and protect - the Tunisian and Arab women from prying eyes. Blue camouflage, now the sky, now the sea, depending on the time and the inclination solar.

It's no accident that the country will attract Tunisian artists - and more - on this hill that slopes toward the Gulf of Carthage. Paul Klee, a name for all of these lands to the blue one who knew how to associate any other color, as if the white - the lack of color - which only emphasizes magnifies and illuminates the blue, would explode inside its tone implied nothing that is everything. It is with surprise that suddenly the blue multiplies and fragments into a thousand blue, each different, intense or soft, possible or impossible, bold or collected.

the country culminating in the minaret of the small mausoleum dedicated just to Sidi Bou Said. But at his feet is the Café des Nattes placid, a meeting place for artists of yesterday and today, where we sipped the famous mint tea with pine nuts floating mocking and laughing in small glasses. A break from the balustrades on the terraces of course blue wooden, writing some notes on tables also suspended between sky and blue sea, is one of those experiences of peace in the exaltation of the senses very difficult to forget.

You reach the shore of the sea with a long paved climb that sometimes, here and there, with no apparent logic, seems to change in light and gentle stairway, together with left and right by the blue-white quilted Housing cured, just stained some bouganviller or tuft of green or orange juice a lemon tree. Perhaps it is a staircase, but the imitation of the ripples of the sea, or just fluff of clouds that veil the sky. Sidi Bou Saïd

, Islam made blue green gold by the sun. That is absolutely no air of violence. The moderation of the lack of moderation. This is what you enjoy as evidence in the latest offshoot of the country occupied by a lovely bar with terrace, the Café Sidi Chabanne, overlooking the bay and the beautiful villas of the seaside town. Lovely bar, delicious coffee tables white and blue, lovely sun in November. Unrestrained beauty of the place, with its stepped terraces that seem to infinity of blue. Islamic? Divine.

Then the slope to the harbor, a long stone stairway victim of the usual neglect of the South. It would be enough just to keep it clean, almost charming. But then I discover that the descent is the land, which is also exasperated: red, boldly red and green, soft green as the agaves that cover it. Sidi Bou Saïd hid the red earth.