Museum

Elargements and ortifications were carried out through the centuries. The entrance to the Ribat is at the foot of a polygonal tower, a corridor bent at an angle, flanked by guard rooms leads to the hall where is erected in the Southern-Eastern angle the Nadhour, the high circular tower for guard. This Ribat compries an ancient oratory in the first floor with seven barrel-vaulted naves and two spans along the qibla wall. An interesting museum of Islamic Arts lies in the ancient oratory. The Ribat of Monastir, and more precisely, its primitive newel, is similar to a large extent to the Ribat of Sousse, especially in the spatial organisation et the used conservation material and techniques.

Founded in 5 August 1958, the Museum of the Ribat of Monastir which attracts each year around 100 thousand visitors, occupies in the first floor the Southern side of the Ribat. It comprises about 300 works kept in 16 showcases; among others fragments of sculpted wood , one of them of the minbar of the big mosque of Kairouan dating back to the III C H., Coptic tissues of the Fatimide and Abasside Egypt , marble funerary steles, metallic glinting ceramics, several feuilles handwritten koranic fragments , perfume phials made of glass and oil lamps made of fired clay. Other works are also exhibited within the museum, an Arab copper astrolabe, a marble and wood sundial, Ottoman contracts of mariage, gold and silver coins.