The Sahara museum, housed in an Andalusian style building, is the most recent Tunisian museum. It was founded in 1997.

If its name suggests it may be devoted to this infinite and fascinating environment of the Sahara, it would be fairer to see it as a illustration of life (plant, animal and human) in a “corner” of the great Sahara contained within the Great Eastern Erg and the edge of Chott el Jerid, in south-western Tunisia. This choice was not made by chance in as far as the region is the gateway to the great South and is to some extent still today, the last nomadic territory left in Tunisia. In this respect, the environment and the population occupying it do belong to the Sahara and participate in its civilisation and its mystery.

The circuit organised for the visit of the museum initiates visitors to the physical environment and to its natural components: vegetation and fauna; then it introduces the Oasis and Nomadic civilisations through material objects pertaining to daily life, through the semantics of symbols and through artistic expression such as it appears in the decoration of ceremonial objects (weaving, jewellery etc.) or in the tattoos that today have fallen out of use.