La Petite Sicile
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There are many gems in the Mediterreanean nation of Tunisia that are often - and this is a blessing - overlooked by package-booked tourists. La Goulette is one of those places. Situated along the Medirerreanean and the outer ring of the Tunis Lake, La Goulette is a small suburb where the Sea is nearly always in site and the smell of the that Sea is inavoidable.
La Goulette's features low-level Arabesque architecture with a water canal cutting through the town. It's charming features earned it the name La Petite Sicile in the late 19th century.
If you ever happen to visit Tunisia, take a taxi to La Goulette. And once there take some time off from touring and choose any place to sit and grab a sandwich. You won't regret it.
Besides its natural and man made beauty, La Goulette is always famous for its intre-faith mixing. Tunisians are a tolerant people, but in a nation where 99% of the people are Sunni Muslim there simply are enough non-Muslims for the intermixing. But in La Goulette there traditionally have been.
Tunisia's previously vibrant Jewish community marked La Goulette as one of its main centers. Even today Tunisians recognize that La Goulette was a center of Jewish life in the nation. Tunisian Catholics were also quite previlant in La Goulette; most of whom were Italian expatrats.
The inter-faith mixing is so legendary that a Tunisian film - which I highly recommend and can be downloaded via torrent - was made celebrating that previous existance. "A Summer in La Goulette" was set in the spring before the Six-Day War and portrated Muslim-Jewish-Christian life in the town.
Today La Goulette has not lost any of its charm, but the Jews are mostly - if not all - gone to Israel and France. Prior to the violent birth of Israel in 1948, Tunisian Jews were a little over 10% of the population. But the antagonism that spread between Arabs and Jews - due to the Zionist movement, which needs to be held acocuntable for stirring tension - and the Jews of Tunisia no longer felt secure in the nation and most of the left for France [60%] while the remaining left for Israel.
The Christian population has also declined, but due to economic reasons not political that Italians have moved back.
La Goulette though still holds out an illstration of mutual co-existance and respect amongst peoples. And the beach and food isn't bad at all either.
