Douz is a town in central Tunisia, known as the "gateway to the Sahara." In previous times it was an important stop on the trans-Saharan caravan routes. Today, it is destination for tourists who are interested in seeing the desert, and a starting point for desert treks by camel, motorcycle, or four-wheel-drive vehicle. Douz is a major palm oasis and as such a large producer of "diglat noor" dates. Douz Hospital Every year Douz hosts the International Festival of the Sahara, a four-day celebration of traditional desert culture. The festival, usually held in November or December, features traditional music and dancing, poetry readings, camel wrestling, and racing of horses and salugis (a type of dog, similar to a greyhound, native to the North African desert.) Douz is home to the Museum of the Sahara, which showcases displays on traditional nomadic desert culture of the Mrazig people who now mostly live a settled life in the town.

Tozeur is very much a city relying on tourism, but everything is done in a tasteful manner. Early developers understood that it was the traditions and culture that represented the possibilities for the future. While agriculture remains an important income, tourism employs a large part of the 40,000 inhabitants. But it is not only the lifestyle and the specific architecture of Tozeur, that bring tourists out here. The city is well situated at the fringe of the seasonal large lake Chott el Jerid, allowing visits into the Sahara, as well as to many other smaller settlements. The history of Tozeur goes back a couple thousand years. Through most of its history has been autonomous, and beyond the direct control of Tunisian rulers. With the arrival of the French protectorate, no place in the country resisted new lifestyles and education more than Tozeur. Houses of Tozeur are decorated with rectangular yellow bricks arranged in patterns. The result is one of the most distinct and beautiful architectural styles of Tunisia. What is even better, is that all new houses implement the same style. If you see a construction site, you will see that load-bearing walls are made in common concrete, and the yellow bricks are added just as decoration. This almost metropolitan city has surprisingly many bicycles,- very rare in Tunisia, and quite a number of women in black veils covering everything. Note the use of white and black ribbons on their cloaks, blue is married, white is unmarried.

Village in Tunisia with about 5,000 inhabitants. Matmata has many of the best examples of troglodyte architecture in the world: vertical caves dug by man into soft sandstone, usually formed as a circle, with doors and rooms dug in from the vertical walls. This type of architecture has a couple of parallels elsewhere in North Africa- in Morocco, Libya, and elsewhere in Tunisia, but no place is endowed with so many examples as Matmata. There are more than 100 dwellings of this kind, but they have since long been outnumbered by normal houses placed over the ground. The population of Matmata is Berber, and it is believed that Matmata has been populated for about 700 years, though there are no remaining constructions remotely as old as this. The softness of the mountain is both the reason for troglodytes being possible, and for troglodytes never becoming very old