The Colours of Tunisia

Before Rome was an empire, Rome had a rival, and the rival was Tunisian. Carthage, on the bay of modern Tunis, ran the western Mediterranean's trade for centuries, and its general Hannibal marched war elephants over the Alps in 218 BC to bring Rome to the edge of destruction. Rome won in the end, then quietly copied Carthage's harbours, ships and farming manuals. Tunisia has been teaching bigger neighbours lessons for 2,200 years.

Where it all began

After Carthage came Roman Africa, so rich in grain it was called Rome's breadbasket, and the mosaics of the Bardo Museum, one of the world's great collections, show just how good life on this coast was. Kairouan rose in 670 AD as one of Islam's holiest cities; its Great Mosque is a masterpiece of the first Islamic centuries, UNESCO-listed. Ibn Khaldun, born in Tunis in 1332, wrote the Muqaddimah and basically invented sociology and the philosophy of history six hundred years early; economists still quote him. Independence from France came in 1956 under Bourguiba, who immediately made Tunisia the Arab world's pioneer in women's rights, the 1956 Code of Personal Status remains landmark. And in December 2010, a Tunisian street vendor's protest lit the Arab Spring; Tunisia was where it began, and the national dialogue that steered its democracy won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2015.

The minds

Ibn Khaldun heads any list, but the bench runs deep: Aziza Othmana, the 17th-century princess whose endowments still fund a Tunis hospital bearing her name; the poet Aboul-Qacem Echebbi, whose verses on the will to live are in the national anthem and were chanted in the 2011 squares; film-makers like Moufida Tlatli, whose Silences of the Palace broke ground for Arab women directors; and a football, handball and tennis tradition, Ons Jabeur reaching Wimbledon finals, that keeps the flag on world screens.

Made in Tunisia

Tunisia is one of the world's top exporters of olive oil, groves stretch to the horizon, some trees a thousand years old, and much of it fills bottles labelled elsewhere in Europe; the secret is out now. Dates from the oases, harissa, UNESCO-listed in 2022, now the world's favourite chili paste, textiles and aerospace parts for European industry, and phosphates from the south. Plus one unexpected export: film sets. The Sahara at Matmata and Tozeur played Tatooine, George Lucas named Star Wars' desert planet after the real Tunisian town of Tataouine. Luke Skywalker's home is a real hotel. You can sleep in it.

Where to go

Tunis: the medina's covered souks, UNESCO-listed, the Bardo's mosaics, and café mint tea in Sidi Bou Said, the blue-and-white cliff village that seduced Paul Klee and Michel Foucault alike. Carthage's ruins next door, standing over the sea that made it rich.

Then the range most visitors never see. El Jem, a Roman colosseum in the middle of the plains nearly as large as Rome's and better preserved, you can still walk the underground galleries. Kairouan for the mosque and the carpets. The island of Djerba with its whitewashed villages, ancient synagogue of El Ghriba and streets of murals. The mountain oases of Chebika and Tamerza, waterfalls in the desert. Matmata's underground troglodyte houses. And the Grand Erg's dunes at Ksar Ghilane, where you swim in a hot spring at the edge of the sand sea.

Culture, on a plate and in the ear

Harissa first: on everything, and rightly. Couscous with fish on the coast, lablabi, chickpea soup with a whole ritual of assembly, for breakfast like a local, brik, the crackling egg-filled pastry, as the national snack, and bambalouni doughnuts in Sidi Bou Said at sunset. Mint tea with pine nuts floating in the glass. Malouf music carries Andalusia's memory in Tunisian scales; the Tabarka jazz festival brings the world to a Genoese fort. And the jasmine: sold in little bouquets on every corner, worn behind the ear. A country that smells like that knows something about living.

Every colour is someone's home. I print it the way memory keeps it: vintage-washed, distressed, made to order.

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P.S. The red field with crescent and star has flown since about 1831, older than most European tricolours, a Mediterranean sun in fabric form. Find your flag.