Built in the late 18th century as a residence for the Bey of Tunis, the Palais de la Rose was later used to lodge the foreign teachers of the Bardo Military School, including Giuseppe Garibaldi.

As ruler of Egypt (1805–48), Muhammad \'Ali Pasha carried out an intense modernisation policy. He hired European professionals and technicians and removed obstacles to the activities of European immigrants.

French and Italian settlers introduced new styles of peasant housing in the Tunisian countryside. Such buildings, which were very different from the peasant houses of the local tradition, made the presence of European settlers evident at first glance.

This colonial farm in Tunisia is modelled on French rural architecture. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the rural landscape in Tunisia was transformed by the construction of many European-style farmhouses.

With the arrival of European migrants, the Christian population in North Africa greatly expanded. The Tunis Catholic community had been served by the Sainte Croix Catholic church since 1837. In the last decade of the 19th century, a new Roman Catholic cathedral dedicated to St Vincent de Paul was erected. Between 1897 and 1913, four further churches were built in Tunis.

Carthage in Tunisia had been the seat of an archbishop from the beginning of the Christian era. In 1884, it was re-established as archdiocese, and work on a new cathedral was initiated. The archdiocese comprised all of the parish churches of Tunisia, which by 1912 numbered 50.

Charles Nicolle (1866–1936) was a French physician and biologist. After a successful career in France, he took over as head of the Pasteur Institute of Tunis in 1902. Soon afterwards, the government provided him with new enlarged facilities for the institute (1903–06).

Under Charles Nicolle’s guide, the Pasteur Institute in Tunis soon became a world-famous centre for bacteriological research and for the production of vaccines and serums to combat most of the prevalent infectious diseases. He carried out ground-breaking research on several infectious diseases that earned him the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1928.

After his years as the Bey’s envoy in Paris, Khair al-Din served as Tunisian minister of navy (1857–62) and prime minister (1873–77). The author of an influential book advocating constitutional government, the parliamentary system and the protection of individual liberty, he founded Sadiqi College (1875), which educated generations of Tunisia’s modernist elite.

Jean-Pierre Lallemand (known as Charles) was born in the French department of Meuse in 1857. An engineer and inspector of mines, he spent some years in Tunisia as an official of the French Protectorate. He painted hundreds of watercolours of Tunis and its inhabitants.

Jean-Pierre Lallemand (known as Charles) was born in the French department of Meuse in 1857. An engineer and inspector of mines, he spent some years in Tunisia as an official of the French Protectorate. He painted hundreds of watercolours of Tunis and its inhabitants.

The poet Marius (Mario) Scalesi (1892–1922) was born in Tunisia to an Italian father and a Maltese mother. He attended French schools and wrote his poems in French during a short life troubled by illness and poverty. Only after his death, did his poems become known and appreciated.

Rodolphe d’Erlanger (Boulogne-Billancourt 1872 – Tunis 1932) was a painter and music scholar. Born in France to an aristocratic family of bankers, he moved to the UK and took British citizenship, before going to Tunisia in 1909 for health reasons. He later settled in Sidi Bu Said, near Tunis, and carried out monumental research on Arab music.

Jean-Pierre Lallemand (known as Charles) was born in the French department of Meuse in 1857. An engineer and inspector of mines, he spent some years in Tunisia as an official of the French Protectorate. He painted hundreds of watercolours of Tunis and its inhabitants.

Lady Hester Stanhope (1776–1839) was a niece of the British Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger. In 1810, she left England for the Middle East, where she lived for the rest of her life, travelling extensively. An assertive, unconventional woman, she adopted male Eastern dress. Her final home was in an abandoned convent in the mountains near Sidon (nowadays in Lebanon).

In Tunis, the Bardo military school was directed until 1853 by the Italian military officer Luigi Calligaris, a supporter of Italian unification. During its first year of activity, the school had among its teachers Giuseppe Garibaldi, on the run from the Kingdom of Sardinia’s authorities.

J.Z. Bem, also called Murad Pasha (Tarnów, now in Poland, 1794 – Aleppo, Syria, 1850) was an army officer who had fought for the Hungarian revolution against the Habsburg troops in 1848–49. After its collapse, he fled to Turkey, adopted Islam, and eventually became the Ottoman governor of Aleppo, where in 1850 he saved the Christian population from being massacred.