The Bardo Museum is one of the most famous museums in the Mediterranean and the second largest in Africa. It can tell about the whole history of Tunisia, which is no less than several millennia.
The original name of the museum was Alaoun (in honour of one of the rulers of Tunisia), but later, after the independence of the state, the museum was renamed to Bardo - after the name of the palace of the Bey, where it is located since 1888. Since the museum's collections are constantly growing and the number of visitors increases every year, the building is often renovated - new rooms are added and collections are redistributed.
The museum consists of several sections, each dedicated to a different period.
The Bardo houses one of the best and one of the largest collections of mosaics from the Roman period. Some mosaic subjects are unparalleled throughout the world and are therefore considered unique - for example, Virgil's Speech. The halls dedicated to this period also contain many marble statues of Greek and Roman gods and goddesses and Roman emperors. All these finds were discovered during excavations in Carthage in the early twentieth century. The pavilions of the museum also exhibit a collection of terracotta statues discovered during excavations of the Libyan-Punic part of Carthage and masks used by actors of the ancient theatre. The next section of the museum, the Islamic Hall, houses the world-famous Blue Quran, as well as a collection of ceramics from ninth-century Asia Minor.
