Things to do in Hammamet

Hammamet was Tunisia's first resort town and still behaves like one. A walled medina sits on a point with sea on two sides. The fifteenth-century kasbah holds its corner.

The old town and the new one

There are two Hammamets, ten minutes apart. The old one is the medina, its lanes, the fort and the cemetery above the water. The new one is Yasmine Hammamet, built from the 1990s around a marina.

• The kasbah — fifteenth-century walls, and the view down the beach from the ramparts.
• Dar Sebastian — a 1920s villa in its gardens, now the international cultural centre.
• Yasmine marina — several hundred berths, restaurants, and a mock medina behind them.
• Pupput — the Roman town and its necropolis, on the road between the two Hammamets.
• The beach — long, shallow-shelving sand running north towards Nabeul.

Seawater cures

Thalassotherapy is a Tunisian industry, not a hotel extra. The country is reckoned second in the world for it, after France. Hammamet and Yasmine hold a cluster of centres.

Cures run by the day or by the week. The longer ones are booked ahead. Winter rates are a fraction of the summer ones, and that is the season the centres fill.

What leaves from here

Hammamet is a base as much as a beach. Day trips run north to Tunis, Carthage and Sidi Bou Said. Others go west to Dougga and Bulla Regia, or south to Kairouan and El Jem.

Each is a long day, and most of it is road. Ten or eleven hours is normal. The Sahara circuits run from two days to a week.

Practical

• Airport. Enfidha-Hammamet is roughly forty kilometres away, about three-quarters of an hour. Tunis-Carthage is an hour north.
• Season. June to September for the sea, April, May and October for walking and day trips. Winter is mild and wet.
• Distances. Nabeul is a quarter of an hour up the coast, Tunis about an hour.
• Day trips. Pick-ups are early, before seven for the far ones. Take water and something for the sun.
• Medina. Small enough to walk in an hour. Prices in the lanes are negotiated, and the first figure is not the price.
• Money. Cards work in the hotels and the marina, cash everywhere else. Dinars cannot be taken out of the country.
• Ramadan. The dates move each year. Beach hotels carry on, but the town's cafes go quiet in daylight.