Last night in this exotic city, and after a ride home in a Caleche it is time to share some lovely photographs of the palaces and museums that I visited today.

Starting at the Dar Si Said palace, I saw amazing painted ceilings, carved plaster and mosaic work .  This place is not for people who do not like symmetry!  The museum is in a bit of a bad way, with some floors missing tiles and crumbling.  Some western conservation would not go amiss so that preservation and conservation rather than replacement happens.
However the museum staff were lovely and let us peek at the out of bounds harem’s courtyard as a treat.  They were very proud of the museum and gave us lots of information, which my schoolgirl french just about managed to intepret.

There are lofty ceilings which keep the rooms very cool.. A must in the heat of summers.

  The walls have incredible tiling and intricate plasterwork.

  

  
I then moved onto the Bahia Palace, which although bigger in size was, I felt anyhow, less beautiful than the Dar Si Said in terms of decoration.

  
Finally I went to Maison Tiskiwin, run by an inspirational anthropologist and historian who had collected tribal artefacts which illustrated migration of tribes in the region due to ecological circumstances such as the spreading of the deserts and drought.  This was a fascinating  riad and I highly recommend it.

Part two of the travels to follow showing more architecture and art…