La Marsa · TN

Jebel el Khaoui

Jebel el Khaoui is a small, tree-covered rise on the northern edge of Tunis, sitting between the beach suburbs of La Marsa and Gammarth. It is not a mountain in any dramatic sense – the summit barely clears 80 metres – but it carries one of the most evocative names in the area: local scholars gloss the toponym as "the hollow mountain", because the slopes are riddled with rock-cut tombs. What makes the climb worthwhile is the unlikely combination it offers in a few quiet minutes of walking: a thin ribbon of Mediterranean woodland surviving inside a dense residential district, a two-thousand-year-old burial ground carved straight into the hillside, and a lookout over the Gulf of Tunis that puts Carthage, Sidi Bou Said and the city skyline into a single sweep. It is a local green space rather than a ticketed attraction, and that understated character is exactly its charm – a place to stretch your legs between swims and lunches on the La Marsa corniche.