Hammamet, Tunisia
Geography
Hammamet is a municipality (roughly equivalent to a district) on the north-east coast of Tunisia. It lies to the south-west of Cap Bon and to the west of the Gulf of Hammamet, some sixty kilometres south of Tunis.
This seaside town falls within the Governorate of Nabeul (roughly equivalent to a county). It has around 75,000 inhabitants and covers nearly 3,600 hectares, forming a conurbation with the neighbouring town of Nabeul.
Landscape
The landscape is made up of two coastal plains that meet the Mediterranean in sandy beaches, running along some twenty kilometres of shoreline. From the town you can see a line of hills rising to the north-west, in the hinterland.
Urban area
The medina forms the heart of Hammamet, measuring roughly 200 metres by 200 metres. The Kasbah stands to the west of the medina, while Martyrs’ Square lies to the north, home to a monument commemorating those who died in the war of independence. Martyrs’ Square is the centre of the modern town: the two main thoroughfares, Avenue Habib Bourguiba and Avenue de la Republique, radiate from here, and the modern centre of Hammamet, with its restaurants and shops, sits close by.
The resort area is split in two. Hammamet Nord is the older resort district, stretching between Nabeul and Hammamet, while Yasmine Hammamet, newer and larger, extends towards Bouficha. Each summer a cultural centre hosts the Hammamet International Festival, held three kilometres from the centre in the former villa of the Romanian millionaire George Sebastian.
History
The town of Hammamet was founded in Punic times by the Carthaginians. Under Roman rule it became one of the most fertile lands of the Roman Empire - indeed this is the origin of the phrase ‘Carthage, the granary of Rome’.
Remains from this period are still visible today. It was under the Romans that Hammamet grew rapidly: from a simple vicus it became an honorary colony under the emperor Commodus. Much of what survives from this era still lies buried underground.
Aqueducts, reservoirs, villas paved with mosaics and, above all, Roman baths are among the remains that have been uncovered. It is these baths - hammam in the plural - that gave the town its name. The many baths discovered testify to the level of civilisation the city had reached in its day.
Al-Idrisi, a 12th-century author, mentions the presence of a fort, still visible in the centre of Hammamet today, which served as an outpost to defend the town against attack. Excavations at the site of Pupput have also brought to light the largest Roman necropolis in Africa, shedding light on the town’s past importance.
Little by little the town grew, and an urban settlement formed around the fort. Work on Hammamet’s great mosque began in the 12th century, and the town walls were built in the 13th, both using materials taken from ancient Roman sites. The town then became the seat of the cadi (judge).
Hammamet was a prosperous town, and this made it a prime target for pirates from Pisa and Catalonia. Reinforcing the walls and building up the fort were not enough to put an end to these raids.
By the 16th century the town was inhabited mainly by very poor people, fishermen and sailors. Hammamet suffered badly owing to its relative neutrality in the rivalry between the Spanish on one side and the Ottomans on the other.
The modern era
In 1574 the Ottomans conquered the town. Janissaries gradually settled in the Kasbah and quickly assimilated into the local population, a process hastened by the emergence of the Kouloughlis, people born of unions between Ottomans and local women.
In the 17th century Hammamet was caught up in the rivalry between the Christian states and the Barbary regencies, and came under attack from the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem. The knights’ first expedition was a success; the second was a bitter failure that made Hammamet famous in Western Europe. Around the same time, Andalusian refugees driven out of Spain flocked to Hammamet, and market gardening and fruit growing flourished.
Hussein I Bey, the first Ottoman sovereign of the dynasty, visited the town in 1727 and, following his visit, ordered the building of a new mosque and the restoration of the Great Mosque and the medina walls.
The contemporary era
In 1881 the French commander Desire Bordier took the town with little resistance. Captivated by the magic of the place, he settled in Hammamet. The town modernised: its medina was gradually left to one side and a new, modern urban centre grew up outside the walls.
The town gained new urban amenities: a railway arrived in 1899, and settlers gradually introduced electricity, the telephone, a French school and a Catholic parish (1884). The creation of the municipality on 19 November 1942 brought further improvements. Until 1930, Hammamet and Nabeul together formed the country’s leading citrus-growing area.
More recently, Hammamet has become a holiday retreat for many well-known figures, among them Bettino Craxi, Sophia Loren, Salvatore Adamo and Frederic Mitterrand.