Djerbahood, Erriadh
An open-air street-art museum painted onto a Djerban village where three faiths have lived together for centuries.
In 2014 the Paris gallery Itinerrance, led by Mehdi Ben Cheikh, brought around 150 artists from more than 30 countries to the village of Erriadh on Djerba and turned its whitewashed medina into an open-air museum — some 250 murals on doors, arches, walls and rooftops. They called it Djerbahood. The roster ran from Tunisia's own eL Seed, master of calligraffiti, to international names like Shepard Fairey, Invader and Inti. A second edition followed in 2021–22, and the collection now exceeds 300 works, run partly through an EU-funded heritage programme with Tunisia's culture and tourism ministries.
The village was chosen deliberately: Erriadh holds the El Ghriba synagogue, traditionally the oldest in Africa, and Djerba — inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2023 — is defined by centuries of Muslim, Jewish and Christian coexistence. Cinema gave the island a fictional identity nearby, at the Mos Eisley locations in Ajim; Djerbahood gave an old village a living one.
Exhibo editorial
This is the article's Exhibo core: contemporary art written directly onto a two-thousand-year-old wall. Djerbahood matters not as a photo-op but as working cultural infrastructure — a growing, curated street-art museum sustaining a real village's economy, born of the creative energy that followed Tunisia's 2011 revolution.
How to find it
Erriadh sits a few km south of Houmt Souk, Djerba's main town. Park at the village edge and explore on foot — the murals are spread through the lanes; allow 1–2 hours to walk the medina. The El Ghriba synagogue is in the same village (modest dress; security checks at the gate).
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