Tozeur: Palms, culture and open landscapes

Tozeur combines palm groves, culture and regional cuisine with distinctive desert scenery. The wider travel area extends to the vast salt plain of Chott El Jerid. This lets you tailor your stay to different interests: the city’s history and food offer a different focus from the landscape and film connections.

Palm Groves and the Vastness of the Chott

You can explore Tozeur’s palm groves on foot or by carriage. The oases of Tozeur and Nefta together have several hundred thousand palm trees. The wider Tozeur travel area also includes Chott El Jerid, a vast salt plain between the Cherb mountain range to the north and the desert to the south. It covers 586,187 hectares and is home to wildlife and plant life typical of pre-Saharan regions.

The wetland is considered difficult to access. A single road, about 80 kilometres long, crosses it and connects Tozeur in the northwest with the Kebili region (“Nefiaoua”) in the southeast. Dghoumes National Park lies on the northern edge of the Chott. It is part of a Ramsar site and is home to steppe flora and fauna. This means the wider travel area offers both an immense salt plain and a landscape with distinctive plant and animal life.

Architecture, Caravan History and Museums

In the old quarters of Tozeur and Nefta, lanes and cul-de-sacs wind between tall walls made of pale bricks. Long, vaulted passageways open onto small squares with relief-decorated façades. Small bricks made from a mixture of clay and sand are characteristic of Jerid architecture and give the towns an ochre desert hue. Tozeur’s history as an important stop on the routes of great caravans also lends the place a historical connection.

The private Dar Chraïet Museum is in Tozeur, a few hundred metres from the town’s palm grove, and is one of the visitor activities associated with Tozeur. Its collection includes jewellery and traditional ceramics, as well as a hall with contemporary paintings honouring the poet Abu al-Qasim al-Shabbi. Costumes and valuable objects are also on display. The Museum of Folk Art and Traditions offers a different focus: its collection includes objects from everyday life.

Film Connections and Theme Parks

Mos Espa is an original Star Wars film set in Tozeur and adds a film connection to the city and museum themes. Eden Palm, a theme park, is also among the visitor activities associated with Tozeur.

The five-hectare Chak Wak park is in the wider Tozeur travel area. As a theme park, it combines dinosaurs with the history of religions; the grounds also feature animals, statues, small museums, caves and huts. Sahara Lounge park features a high ropes course among palm trees. The attractions therefore range from culture and film to parks with very different focuses.

Dates and Jerid Dishes

Several restaurants along a road beside Tozeur’s palm grove serve regional Jerid cuisine, Italian food and international dishes. Rfiss is a date dumpling seasoned with a little salted butter and is recommended to try in Tozeur. Camel steak is also recommended as an unusual dish to try.

Tozeur is considered the capital of dates. Featured varieties include the red, sweet Allig and the soft, translucent Deglet Nour. Two Jerid dishes add to the culinary experience in the wider Tozeur travel area: Chakhchoukha consists of lamb cooked in sauce and is served with traditional semolina bread called mtabga. Barkoukech is a type of couscous with large grains, garnished with meat and small dried fish.

Choose a Holiday Rental to Suit Your Travel Priorities

When choosing a holiday rental, it helps to weigh up what matters most: should your stay focus mainly on Tozeur’s city history, museum collections and Jerid cuisine, or would you also like to make the vast landscapes of the wider travel area a central part of your trip?

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