There are many unique and fascinating things to see in Tunisia, but the most exciting and breathtaking of the organised tours in Tunisia is a visit to the Sahara Desert in off - road vehicles.

This tour is filled with unexpected and pleasant surprises; a 3rd-century Roman amphitheater in El Jem, the most significant monument of the Roman period in Northern Africa and the third largest amphitheatre of the Roman Empire after those in Rome and Pula. Then there’s Mahares, a fishing village in the Gulf of Gabes with an unusual outdoor museum and sculptures on the beach. The city of Gabes is a unique maritime oasis with 300,000 palm trees on the seashore.

Then comes Matmata, a region strewn with sandstone rocks that looks an exotic lunar landscape. The Berber settlement in Matmata, with houses dug into soft sandstone rocks, is an exciting scene for European visitors, as is the tour of the Douz oasis, known as the desert door, which is the most picturesque oasis and settlement of the Tunisian Sahara. This is also the starting point for touring the desert on camels; watching the sunset from a camel’s back is indescribable. After spending the night at a hotel that might be from one of Scheherazade’s tales, the route leads to Chott al Jarid, a large dried-up salt lake, or salt desert, that covers 6,000 square kilometers, then further into the Chott with a break until the sun rises along the belt of fertile oases and date palm plantations.

More than 90 kilometers of exciting driving in off -road vehicles through desert terrain, rocky dunes and nomad dwellings, along sections of famous rallies like the famous Paris- Dakar Rally, brings you to the ‘small salt desert’ of Chott el-Gharsa, where the acclaimed movie The English Patient was filmed. Next comes a trip through the ‘crystal desert’ and a ride towards the Algerian border across large sand dunes, some of which are more than 25 metres tall, and in keeping with the film motif you arrive to the site where parts of the Star Wars film series were shot.

After a brief rest, the drive continues to Tozeur, the largest oasis and desert city, for a tour of the Dar Zamen Museum, which retraces 3,000 years of Tunisian history through wax figures.

There’s a tour of the city’s downtown section, built by the French in the 19th century, a walk along the Habib Bourguiba main avenue and a visit to the bazaar for some bargaining with vendors of jewelry, trinkets, leather and porcelain goods. The items displayed at the Bardo National Museum – housing the world’s largest collection of ancient Roman mosaics – are most impressive.

The historical tour is followed by crossing the large lake in La Goulette, Tunis’s outer city section where the country’s largest passenger and cargo port is located. Panoramic tours are organised of Tunis’s elite outskirts – Carthage, with residential areas and the presidential palace. These are followed by visits to archaeological sites from Carthage and the Roman Empire: the 2nd-century ruins of Anthony’s thermal springs and the old Punic harbour, a tour of Sidi Bou Said, a colourful 15th-century Moor/Andalusian settlement that is today known as a mecca for European painters and artists, for which reason it is sometimes called the ‘Tunisian Montmartre’.