Ksar Jelidet

Southern Tunisia


This expansive ruined complex of ghorfas (long, barrel-vaulted rooms built to store grain) overlooks the road out of town on the southern edge of the village of Jelidet. There's nothing slick here – the ksar (fortified granary) has been left abandoned, and weeds grow high in the huge courtyard that the ghorfas enclose. The buildings themselves are in surprisingly good condition considering, and while it is naturally overshadowed by nearer, more spectacular, ksour, the feeling of entering a lost space is a highly evocative one.