The highest point in Tunisia is Jebel ech Chambi (1,544 m).

Tunisia, situated in Northern Africa, has a thousand miles of Mediterranean coastline.

Evidence of Stone Age settlements has been found near the Tunisian oasis at Kebili.

The city-state of Carthage, founded by Phoenicians, was situated in present-day Tunisia around 814 BC.

Dido, a princess of the Phoenician city-state of Tyre, is said to have been the first queen of Carthage.

The First Punic (Phoenician) War, between Carthage and Rome, was fought over the island of Sicily.

The First Punic War lasted from 264 BC until 241 BC; the Second Punic was from 218 to 201 BC and the Third Punic war started in 149 BC and ended in 146 BC.

Hannibal, the Carthaginian general, crossed the Alps into Italy with thirty-seven elephants in 218 BC.

At the end of the Third Punic War Carthage was destroyed and its inhabitants sold into slavery. Carthage was eventually re-built as a Roman city.

Present-day Tunisia became part of Roman Africa.

In the early fifth century Carthage was captured by the Vandals, a Germanic tribe.

The Byzantines took Carthage from the Vandals in 533.

Arab armies conquered the region in the seventh century.

Spain occupied Tunisia for a short time in the middle of the sixteenth century. Tunisia became part of the Ottoman Empire in 1574.

A French Protectorate was established over Tunisia in 1883.

Tunisia became an independent country in 1956. A republic was proclaimed the following year.

Habib Bourguiba was the president of Tunisia from 1957 until 1987.

May Eljeribi was elected leader of the Progressive Democratic Party (the opposition) in December 2006. This is the first time a woman achieved such a position in Tunisia.

In early 2011, at a time of unrest across the Arab world, protests took place in Tunisia; hundreds of people died in rioting.

In June 2015 gunman killed thirty-eight people on the beach at the Sousse resort.