Homes for rent in La Medina

Living in the Medina of Tunis means living in a fabric whose layout has hardly changed for centuries: covered lanes, dead ends, studded doors and houses turned inward on their patio. The La Medina delegation covers the old town between the Kasbah and Bab Bhar, with its souks around the Zitouna mosque and its quieter residential quarters to the south and west. Homes to rent here are unusual: a room on a patio, a floor of a dar (a traditional courtyard house), a studio fitted out under a roof terrace.

The online supply is small: very few listings of homes to rent are published, and they come from private owners. Many rentals are still agreed between neighbours. To compare with the city centre, Montfleury or El Omrane, all the homes to rent in Tunis governorate offer a much wider choice.

Bab Mnara, Tourbet El Bey, Hafsia: three faces of the old town

Bab Mnara, to the south-west, and Tourbet El Bey, around the mausoleum of the Husainid beys, are residential quarters where you hear children more than traders. You find family dars divided between several households, and floors let separately with access through the shared skifa (entrance hall). Rents there remain among the most modest in central Tunis, at the cost of sometimes basic comfort.

The Hafsia, the former Hara quarter rebuilt from the 1970s onwards, has a different profile: low, more recent buildings with proper flats, often better equipped than the neighbouring dars. That is where a share of the flats to rent in the Medina is found, when there are any.

Who rents in the Medina

Tenants are varied. There are students from the faculties on boulevard du 9-Avril, close by, looking for a room or a small studio to share. There are staff from the ministries and administrations of the Kasbah, craftsmen and traders from the souks, and a population of artists, researchers and Europeans drawn by life on foot between the old town and the modern centre. Each is after something different: price for some, character for others.

A room often rents for between 250 and 450 DT (Tunisian dinars) a month, and a studio or small S+1 rarely goes above 700 DT, except for tastefully restored houses aimed at foreign tenants, which rent for more, sometimes furnished. Nightly rentals also exist, but they belong to guesthouses, not to this page.

What to check in a dar

Medina houses are old, and their weak points are well known: rising damp in ground-floor walls, poorly sealed roof terraces, wiring redone piecemeal. Visit after rain if possible, open the cupboards, look at the ceilings. Ask whether the home has its own STEG (electricity) and SONEDE (water) meters or whether bills are shared with the other occupants of the dar.

Check access too: some dead ends let through neither cars nor large furniture, and moving house is done by handcart. Insist on a written lease stating the rent, term, deposit, usually one or two months, and how upkeep of the shared areas, patio and roof terrace, is split. On Houni, you contact the advertiser directly, so ask these questions before getting lost in the lanes for a viewing.

The right time to look

Demand rises in September with the start of the university year and the return of the administrations, and that is when rooms go fastest. Winter is quieter and leaves room to negotiate. In summer, some owners prefer to let to tourists and the diaspora, which shrinks the yearly supply between June and September: it is better to look before or after that period. Those thinking of buying rather than renting will find the homes for sale in the Medina, dars and floors included.