Bizerte City Hall in Belgique Street area
|o Urban||34 km2 (13.127 sq mi)|
|Elevation||5 m (16 ft)|
|o Density||3,363/km2 (8,712/sq mi)|
|Time zone||UTC+01:00 (CET)|
|Area code(s)||+216 (Tun) 72 (Bizerte)|
Bizerte or Bizerta (Arabic: Benzart), the classical Hippo, is a town of Bizerte Governorate in Tunisia. It is the northernmost city in Africa, located 65 km (40mil) north of the capital Tunis. It is one of the oldest known settlements in Tunisia, having been founded by settlers from the Phoenician port of Sidon around 1100BC. It is also known as the last town to remain under French control after the rest of the country won its independence from France. The city had 142,966 inhabitants in 2014.
Hippo is the latinization of a Punic name (Punic: ?, ?pwn), probably related to the word ûbôn, meaning "harbor". To distinguish it from Hippo Regius (the modern Annaba, in Algeria), the Greeks and Romans used several epithets. Scylax of Caryanda mentions it as and ("Hippo the City").Polybius mentions it as (Greek: , Hipp?n Diárrhytos), "Hippo Divided-by-the-Water", in reference to the town's prominent canal. It also appears in Roman, Vandal, and Byzantine sources as . Its Arabic name Banzart () and the French and English forms derived from it all represent phonetic developments of its ancient name.
Around 950 BC the city came under the influence of Carthage during the reign of Queen Dido/Elissa, In 309 BC, during the Greek-Punic Wars and after the defeat of Agathocles, the city and Sicily returned to the Carthaginian Republic. Several Carthaginian generals used its port during the Punic Wars of 264-146 BC - such as Hamilcar Barca, Mago, Hasdrubal and Hannibal.
Arab armies took Bizerte in 647 in their first invasion of the area, but the city reverted to control from Constantinople until the Byzantines were defeated and finally driven from North Africa in 695-98. The troops of Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire captured the city in 1535; the Turks took it in 1574. The city then became a corsair harbour and struggled against the French and the Venetians.
With its occupation of Tunisia in 1881, France gained control of Bizerte and built a large naval harbour in the city.
In 1924, after the French government officially recognized the Soviet Union (USSR), the western military fleet of White Russia that had been kept in the port of Bizerte was returned to the Soviet government. The ships were never moved from the port and finally were sold there as scrap metal.
In March 1939, towards the end of the Spanish Civil War, Spanish Republican Navy Commander Miguel Buiza ordered the evacuation of the bulk of the Republican fleet. Three cruisers, eight destroyers and two submarines left Cartagena harbor and reached Bizerte, where the French authorities impounded them.
During the Second World War, the German and Italian armies occupied Bizerte until Allied troops defeated them on 7 May 1943. During the fighting between the Allied forces and the German Army, many of the city's inhabitants fled to the countryside or to Tunis. The city suffered significant damage during the battle.
Due to Bizerte's strategic location on the Mediterranean, France retained control of the city and her naval base after Tunisian independence in 1956. In 1961 Tunisian forces blockaded the area of Bizerte and demanded French withdrawal. The face-off turned nasty when a French helicopter took off and drew fire. The French brought in reinforcements; when these were fired upon, France took decisive military action against the Tunisian forces. Using state-of-the-art weapons and decisive force the French took Bizerte and Menzel Bourguiba. During three days in July 1961, 700 Tunisians died (1200 wounded); the French lost 24 dead (100 wounded).
Meetings at the UN Security Council and other international pressure moved France to agreement; the French military finally abandoned Bizerte on 15 October 1963.
Bizerte is on a section of widened inlet and east-facing coast of the north coast of Tunisia, 15 kilometres from Ras ben Sakka (the northernmost point in Africa on the Mediterranean Sea), 20 kilometers northeast of the Ichkeul lake (a World Heritage Site), 30 kilometers (18 miles) north of the archaeological site of Utica and 65 kilometers north of Tunis.
it has to the west coastal hills forming an outcrop of the Tell Atlas with well-conserved woods and vantage points. Its associated beaches include Sidi Salem, La Grotte, Rasenjela, and Al Rimel. It is on a section of Mediterranean climate coastline, close to Sardinia and Sicily, as opposed to coasts in the south of the country which have a year-round dry desert climate.
The city is centered on the north shore of the canal of Bizerte linking the Mediterranean Sea to a tidal lake, the Lac de Bizerte which is larger than all parts of the town combined, to the immediate south. Built-up areas are in three directions:
The bridge leads to the motorway A4 leading to Tunis-Carthage International Airport and the capital. On the town side the P11 passes semi-rural Louata, hugs Ichkeul Lake and branches into a western route, the P7, leading directly to Tabarka on the coast next to the Algerian border. The P11 leads south-west to Béja, a governorate center, in the foothills of the Tell Atlas, forks into several roads at Bou Salem, a small town in a broad fertile plain, and climbs to Firnanah passing two high-altitude lakes and also approaching the north-west border with Algeria.
|Climate data for Bizerte (1981-2010, extremes 1901-2017)|
|Record high °C (°F)||27.0
|Average high °C (°F)||15.6
|Daily mean °C (°F)||11.2
|Average low °C (°F)||7.0
|Record low °C (°F)||-4.2
|Average precipitation mm (inches)||88.8
|Average precipitation days||11.3||10.3||9.6||6.5||3.9||1.6||0.6||1.1||4.0||7.8||9.5||11.4||77.6|
|Average relative humidity (%)||83||80||78||78||75||70||68||69||75||78||83||83||77|
|Mean monthly sunshine hours||142.6||163.9||217.0||237.0||303.8||330.0||384.4||356.5||267.0||207.7||153.0||133.3||2,896.2|
|Mean daily sunshine hours||4.6||5.8||7.0||7.9||9.8||11.0||12.4||11.5||8.9||6.7||5.1||4.3||7.9|
|Source #1: Institut National de la Météorologie (precipitation days 1961-1990 and extremes 1950-2017)[note 1]|
|Source #2: Deutscher Wetterdienst (extremes 1901-1992) Arab Meteorology Book (humidity and sun)|
|14.6 °C (58.3 °F)||14.0 °C (57.2 °F)||14.3 °C (57.7 °F)||15.1 °C (59.2 °F)||17.2 °C (63.0 °F)||19.9 °C (67.8 °F)||23.4 °C (74.1 °F)||24.9 °C (76.8 °F)||23.8 °C (74.8 °F)||21.7 °C (71.1 °F)||18.8 °C (65.8 °F)||16.2 °C (61.2 °F)|
Bizerte's economy is very diverse. There are several military bases and year-round tourism. As a tourist centre the region is however not as popular as the eastern coast of Tunisia. There is manufacturing (textile, auto parts, cookware), fishing, fruits and vegetables, and wheat.
Hippo Diarrhytus is a titular see of the Roman Catholic Church. In 1989-2002 it was held by Mgr. Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz, then by Mgr. Jose Paala Salazar, O.P. in 2002-2004 and by Mrg. Manfred Grothe since October 14, 2004. The city and see of Hippo Diarrhytus should not be confused with those of Hippo Regius where Saint Augustine of Hippo was the bishop.
After the Serbian army's retreat through Albania in 1915, during the World War I, part of the army was transported by the French navy to their naval base in Bizerte. Serbian soldiers, and a small number of civilians, arrived in Bizerte on three occasions. In December 1915 and early 1916, after the Albanian Golgotha, then later in 1916 after the first clashes on the Salonica Front in Greece and in the early 1917 when Serbian volunteers began to gather in Bizerte. During the entire war, the soldiers were transported to the Salonica Front while the wounded were transported back to Tunisia. It is estimated that over 60,000 Serbian soldiers passed through the camp. The training of the volunteers was organized in the camp, education of the disabled but also the cultural events. Citizens of Bizerte, French soldiers and administration were highly obliging to the Serbs, especially the Bizerte governor, admiral Émile Guépratte. He was involved in the care of the soldiers on daily basis and organized ceremonial greetings for every ship upon arrival. The last Serbian soldiers left Bizerte on 18 August 1919. Admiral Guépratte directly disobeyed the order from the French High Command by which he was ordered to dislocate Serbs into the Sahara's hinterland. When Guépratte visited Belgrade for the first time in 1930, he was awaited by the crowd which carried the admiral on their shoulders from the Belgrade Main railway station to the Slavija Square. The street where the admiral was carried, today bears his name (Serbian: ?, romanized: Admiral Guépratte Street).
In the Northern Africa, Serbian wounded soldiers were treated in the hospitals in Bizerte, Tunis, Sousse, Sidi Abdala, Algiers, Oran and Annaba. From December 1915 to August 1919, a total of 41,153 Serbian soldiers were treated. In Tunisian hospitals, 833 soldiers died (typhus, malaria, wounds, hunger and frostbites). In Sidi Abdala, local population helped the Serbs providing food, medicines and nurture. A total of 1,722 people died there.
The dead in Bizerte, Sous and Tunis were buried in the memorial ossuary on the Christian cemetery in Bizerte. Those who died in Sidi Abdala were interred on the joint French-Serbian military cemetery. Those two cemeteries are the largest of all in Northern Africa where Serbian soldiers were buried - a total of 24 cemeteries in Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco, with 3,005 buried soldiers.
Bizerte is twinned with: