As the first phase in the safeguard programme for the Arab town of Monastir, this intervention covered the Chraka Quarter, an area of 2.2 hectares in the North-East part of the town. The quarter is situated next to the government centre and immediately adjacent to the route which links the presidential mausoleum and the local Palace of Congress. These focal points of the programme are all grouped around four streets and numerous dead-end roads (derbs) which lead from them.

Seventeen houses were given new functions and now form a complex with a traditional arts centre, shops, a museum, an art gallery, two restaurants and cafés. This commercial centre is largely intended as a tourist attraction for major holiday resorts in the same region. Some of the single-storey houses transformed within the programme have maintained their independence and are accesible only from the public streets. Others have been opened up to form a continuous network of passage-ways and corridors flanked by small shops in the ground floor rooms. Rest areas have been created in courtyards. Certain façades were reconstructed in ornamental brick work.


Source: Aga Khan Trust for Culture