Old town´s fading out
“None of the regions along the Mediterranean have kept such an Oriental look about them as Tunisia has. But, like elsewhere, this unique character will slowly disappear, and the sumptuous bazaars, with their mysterious galleries and such picturesque narrow streets, will be no more than memories in just a short time.
Bizerte is called to transform itself and lose its poetry, even more quickly than other Tunisian cities due to the changes imposed by its strategic location.
Like all the places that I have visited which remain in my memory like a type of painting, Bizerte remains like a Far East dream to me, posed on the edge of the Mediterranean and like a new and captivating Venice.
And it has the charm of nights in Venice, without its architectural treasures, it’s true, but all the penetrating poetry of the ancient cities of the Orient!”
Archduke Ludwig Salvator of Austria, Bizerte, J. Rothschild, Paris, 1900 (Prague, 1897)
