Bizerta

The town was founded by Phoenician seamen. The first mentions of Bizerte can be found in the chronicles of the Roman Empire where it was called as its colony Hippon-Diaritus. In the 7th century it was taken by Arabs renamed the town into Benzert. Later, Frenchmen changed the pronouncing of the name and it became Bizerte.

Bizerte is called by right "African Venice". Rather narrow channel begins in the sea and then it is crossing living quarters in a zigzag; houses are rising just from its waters.

Cozy streets planted with palms and mimosa and bordered with rather low, closely packed houses from both sides are conducive to romantic walks. Walls of several bastions - a Spanish fort, a Turkish citadel and French caserns - don't seem very threatening now. Former military objects were transformed by local people to museums.

You should make the round of the Old Port. You couldn't imagine a better fish market; Bizerte is not in vain a real sea town. When boats are returning from night fishing, on the rather cramped port square you could see a picturesque performance: communication between customer and fishmonger. There is a remarkable detail: the catch is always passed to fishmongers; you can't see a fisherman selling his catch. Local people keep the rules. The variety of the assortment is striking: on the heaps of ice there are attractively places shrimps, eels, rose fishes (sea bastes), sardines, soles, squids, mackerels, merlans, spiny and common lobsters, octopuses and cods.

In the Russian history Bizerte was connected with the destiny of some ships of the Black Sea fleet led by Wrangel from the Crimea. In 1920-s there was the centre of Russian emigration in the Northern Africa. Evacuation from the Crimea was oriented into nowhere - nobody knew the destination point of that sad voyage; at the end it was only France who gave Russian ships a permission to moor in its colony - Tunisia, in the port of Bizerte. The Russian squadron was put in quarantine, and only after several months people might step on the shore. Some of them decided to return to the post-revolutionary Russia but others (the most part of emigrants) settled down in Tunisia.

Anastassia Alexandrovna Shirinskaya is still living in Bizerte - she was a daughter of an officer of the Black Sea fleet. Little Nastya stepped on this shore at the age of 5. Now, Anastassia Alexandrovna is a respectable person in Bizerte, a kind of a honorable citizen of Tunisia. In spite of the fact that she has been spending all her life here, she refused to take Tunisian citizenship. She stayed a Russian citizen. Any street boy in Bizerte can show you the house of Mrs Shirinskaya. In her boors published in Russian and in French she described the events of the past - these books are worthy reading.