Bardo, Tribunal Chamber, Tunis, Tunisia

From the archive

This photochrome print of the tribunal chamber in the Bardo Palace in Tunis is part of “Views of Architecture and People in Tunisia” from the catalog of the Detroit Photographic Company. Baedeker’s The Mediterranean: Handbook for Travellers (1911) informed its readers that the Bardo, located in the fertile plain to the west of Tunis, was a 13th- century palace that was “the former winter-residence of the beys.” It once “formed a little town by itself” and housed “a treasury, a mosque, baths, barracks, and a prison.” This photo shows the richly decorated tribunal chamber, which Baedeker called the “dwelling of the court officials.” The Detroit Photographic Company was launched as a photographic publishing firm in the late 1890s by Detroit businessman and publisher William A. Livingstone, Jr., and photographer and photo-publisher Edwin H. Husher. They obtained exclusive rights to use the S