Il museo Dar Ben Abdallah nella medina di Tunisi. Uno strumento per la conservazione e la valorizzazione del patrimonio mondiale

The Medina of Tunis, declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1979, is the best-preserved historic center in the Mediterranean, as it has never suffered the effects of major natural disasters and radical urban interventions. At present it preserves an Arab-Muslim architectural heritage of great cultural value, still legible and significant, which has existed for more than thirteen centuries. Dar Ben Abdallah is an 18th-century residence typical of the domestic architecture of the Tunis medina. After inde-pendence, it was transformed into the Museum of Popular Arts and Traditions. According to the structure of the building and the collections on display, the essay aims to analyse and describe the key role played by the Dar Ben Abdallah Museum in the preservation and enhancement of popular memory, retracing in broad outline everyday life of the Tunisian upper-middle-class in the 19th and 20th centuries.