Quick Answer — Takrouna is a near-abandoned Berber village stacked up a 200-metre rock six kilometres west of Enfidha, with a 360-degree view over the Gulf of Hammamet, Jebel Zaghouan, and the olive plains of Kairouan. Resettled by Moriscos from Andalusia in 1609 and fought over by New Zealand’s Māori Battalion in April 1943, it is the easiest Amazigh village in Tunisia to reach — 30 minutes from Hammamet or Enfidha airport, 90 from Tunis — and takes an hour or two: the climb, the zaouia, the eco-museum, and mint tea at the Rocher Bleu café if it is open (it has closed intermittently since a rockfall in 2021, so ask ahead). Go late afternoon for the light. Here’s the whole story.
From the Enfidha–Zaghouan road it looks like a fortress somebody forgot to finish: a single limestone tooth rising out of the olive groves, with a crust of stone houses climbing its sides and a white dome on top. Guy de Maupassant passed beneath it in 1887 on his way to Kairouan and wrote about the cactus forest at its foot, twisted like the limbs of dragons. The cactus is still there. So is the village, just about.
Takrouna is the kind of place Tunisia has many of and rarely advertises: a Berber hill village of real antiquity, half empty, with a story in every layer of the rock. What makes it different is that it sits twenty minutes from an international airport and one of the country’s biggest resort strips, which means anyone staying in Hammamet can be up here before lunch.
A Village in Four Levels
The village climbs the rock in tiers, and each one holds a different chapter. At the bottom live the families who came down off the summit over the past half-century — for comfort, for water, for electricity and roads, and above all for the school. Higher up are the older houses, many roofless now, their stone walls and vaulted rooms still standing in the sun; our guide to Tunisian architecture sets this high-rock building style beside Kesra and Zriba. On the third level stands the zaouia of Sidi Abdelkader El Jilani, the village saint, and a small mosque said to date to the thirteenth century. At the very top, where the view opens on every side, lived the Gmach family, who came from Andalusia.
That family explains the name. Takrouna is thought to derive from a Berber tribe that crossed into Spain in the eighth century, at the start of Muslim Andalusia, and settled around a place called Ta Kurunna in the mountains near Ronda. When Philip III expelled the Moriscos in 1609, their descendants — among them the Gomez, who became the Gmach — crossed back and built on this rock, alongside the Berbers who had never left. It is the same exile that built Testour in the same decade, transplanted to a hilltop; a whole strand of Tunisia’s Amazigh heritage and its Andalusian one, folded into a single village.
The Rock at War
Takrouna’s height made it a natural fortress, and in the spring of 1943 it became one. After the Axis retreat from the Mareth Line, the Italians dug in on the summit — paratroopers of the Folgore division among them — and on the night of 19 April the New Zealand Division attacked. It was the 28th (Māori) Battalion that took the rock, scaling it in darkness over three days of close fighting; Lance-Sergeant Haane Manahi led a handful of men up the near-vertical face and was recommended for the Victoria Cross, which was controversially downgraded. Takrouna was the New Zealanders’ last major action in North Africa, and the village is still a name in Māori military memory. There is nothing to mark it on the rock; the old walls are the monument.
The Climb, the View, and the Rocher Bleu
You leave the car at the foot of the rock and walk. It is a steep, breathless ten or fifteen minutes up steps and lanes between the ruins, best taken slowly, with donkeys and children for company and the smell of wild thyme and prickly pear. The top is the point: on a clear day you see the Gulf of Hammamet and the sea to the east, the pyramid of Jebel Zaghouan to the north, Sousse and Hergla down the coast, and to the south the plain of Kairouan combed into endless rows of olives. Come in the late afternoon, when the plain turns gold and the sea goes lilac, and stay for the sunset.
On the summit, in the old Gmach house, the painter and ceramist Aïda Gmach Bellagha created the Rocher Bleu — a stone-floored café with Berber rugs, a small gallery, and the eco-museum Dar Gmach, two rooms of local pottery, tools, and household objects alongside works given by the painter Ali Bellagha. The name honours the writer Tahar Guiga, a son of the village. It is the reason Takrouna is more than a ruin, and the honest caveat comes here: on 2 February 2021 part of the rock face collapsed, and the site has since closed and reopened more than once because of falling stone. Ask at a café in Enfidha, or on the road, before you count on tea at the top. The walk and the view need no ticket.
Honestly
Takrouna is not a living village in the way Matmata or Chenini still are; by 2024 only a couple of families remained on the rock. It is an hour’s visit, not a day, and its beauty is entangled with neglect: the collapsed houses are picturesque and they are also the result of nobody maintaining them. What has been saved here has been saved by one determined woman, some village volunteers, and the occasional grant, which is a fair summary of how heritage survives in much of Tunisia. Go, pay for your tea, buy something in the gallery if it is open, and understand that your visit is part of the argument for keeping the place standing.
Practicalities
Getting there. Takrouna is 6 km west of Enfidha on the road to Zaghouan; a taxi from Enfidha takes ten minutes. From Hammamet or Enfidha airport it is about half an hour by car, from Sousse forty minutes, from Tunis an hour and a half. There is no public transport up the hill; louages to Enfidha, then a taxi.
Pair it with. Zaghouan and its Roman Temple of the Waters, half an hour north, for the classic loop back to Tunis (see our day trips from Tunis); or Kairouan, an hour southwest, and El Jem beyond it, for a full day out of the resorts.
When. Any season but high summer at midday; autumn, when the olive harvest fills the plain below, is best. Wear shoes with grip; the steps are worn and there are no railings.
The village of Berber origins that tells its story to every visitor will remain a unique place — not only for the way it is built, but for the history brimming in every stone. It just needs people to keep climbing.
From the Carthage Magazine Bookshelf
If Takrouna is your first hill village — and Hammamet your base — these three take you further into the country than the coast road.
- All About Tunisia — the definitive English-language traveler’s guide. 572 pages, 27 chapters, all nine regions, every UNESCO inscription, five thematic trails — and the practical answers (visa, currency, transport, etiquette) most travelers wish they’d had on the plane. $24.99 · PDF & EPUB.
- Speak Like a Local — 200+ Tunisian Arabic phrases with native audio recorded in Tunis. The phrases for the taxi, the souk, the café, and the dinner table. $14.99 · PDF, EPUB, MP3.
- The Authentic Tunisian Cookbook — sixty traditional recipes from the heart of North Africa. For when you get home and find yourself missing the food. $9.99 · PDF & EPUB.
All three available as a bundle for $39.99 — guide, language, and food, delivered together.
