Chikly

Chikly Island

Chikly (Arabic: شكلي ‎) is a small island located in the northern part of Lake of Tunis and known to house Fort Santiago Chikly, a former Roman citadel which was reconstructed by the Governor Spanish of Goletta, Luys Peres Varga, between 1546 and 1550. The fort was completely abandoned in 1830 and therefore deteriorated.

Chikly was declared a national cultural heritage in December 1993 and is owned by Ministry of Culture of Tunisia. To date, the fort is being restored as part of the Tunisian-Spanish cooperation involving the National Heritage Institute and the University of Madrid. Excavation and cleaning took place in 1994 followed by archaeological excavations at 1995. They found mosaics and charts dated back to the Byzantine and Roman period in the 4th and 5th centuries.