Sleep The family-run Dar el Medina (00 216 71 563022, www.darelmedina.com; doubles from £120, B&B) is Tunis’s first riad-style hotel, and has 12 cosy rooms. Or ask for one of the modern, inoffensively corporate-looking rooms away from the street at the Hotel Carlton (00 216 71 330644, www.hotelcarltontunis.com; doubles from £51, B&B). It gets noisy at night.

Travel BA (0844 493 0787, www.ba.com) has flights to Tunis from Gatwick from £155 return. Alternatively, try Tunisair (020 7734 7644, www.tunisair.com).

Fez: for funky medinas

Saying you’ll get lost in Fez is like saying you’ll get wet in water. But shrug off those inhibitions, and it won’t matter a jot – you’ll be too absorbed in the craftwork on every corner. Along medina walls, men weave long red, purple and orange strands of cactus silk, and in Seffarine Square, metalworkers whack sheets of brass and copper into elegant lamps and pots. Nearby, newly dyed clothes drip pools of indigo, while the stench of ammonia-rich pigeon deposits rises from the leather-producing tannery pits.

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But the greatest meeting of craft and art is the city’s zellij – the tiny, painted mud tiles that form bewilderingly complex geometric doodles in myriad shades. They’re everywhere you turn: on the floors of ancient medersas (schools), lining fountains (many homes don’t have running water), and coating the walls of mosques, towering minarets and the city gates.

One of the best places to contemplate the zellij work is in the Bou Inania medersa, on the city’s main shopping street, Talaa Kebira – so ornate, it’s impossible for your eye to settle. Or, slip down a warren of duck-your-head alleys on the quieter Al-Andalous side of the city: the Sahrij medersa isn’t as well restored as Bou Inania, but it’s much more peaceful. Hand the guardian 10 dirhams (about 75p) and wander on your own: it feels like being inside a kaleidoscope.

Eat among the zellij at Maison Bleue (00 212 3574 1843, www.maisonbleue.com; four courses with wine from £45). It’s pricey, but the chicken-stuffed pastries are it.

Sleep There’s exquisite zellij and 16m-high ceilings in the five rooms at Riad Alkantara (www.riadalkantara.com; doubles from £240, B&B). At Riad Tizwa (www.riadtizwa.com; doubles from £50, B&B), 12th-century replicas mingle with original zellij (earliest examples date back to around 808AD). The nine rooms are decorated in beautiful jewel colours.

Travel The only direct flights are with Atlas Blue (020 7307 5803, www.atlas-blue.com), from Gatwick, from £185 return.

Alexandria: for architecture

Curled around the coast west of the Nile Delta, Alexandria (‘Alex’ for short) was better known as the Capital of Memory after its demise in the ’40s.

The extravagant seafront mansions of settlers from around the Med decayed as colonialism waned and the Egyptian Republic rose. It’s still wreathed in sea-worn neglect, but that’s the appeal: like a stay in a sepia postcard. Start in Saad Zaghloul Square. Here the fab-faded Cecil Hotel flaunts it like a party guest that never left: its Moorish-Art Deco facade typifies timeworn Alex.

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