The Palace of the Bardo, a short distance to the north of the city, is the Tunisian Windsor, though nowadays it is seldom if ever occupied. Formerly the winter residence of the sovereign, it is the center of a congeries of villas, kiosks, pavilions, offices, barracks, and stables, which are grouped helter-skelter in the inconsequential Oriental fashion, without the slightest regard to harmony, order, or convenience. Though the French destroyed the fortifications which originally surrounded it, there is much that is majestic and beautiful about the place, its white walls, marble terraces, and fluted columns rising from well-kept lawns and hedged gardens ablaze with flowers. The Bardo is divided into three parts: the private apartments of the bey, which, though almost never used, are as rigidly closed to the public as the dwelling of any other Moslem gentleman; the state apartments, which he occasionally uses instead of those in the town palace, the Dar-el-Bey, for holding courts of justice, official audiences, and receptions; and the Alaoui Museum. Access to the Bardo is gained by the Staircase of the Lions, which is flanked on either side by numerous undersized and not at all imposing marble images of the _Felis leo_, couchant, rampant, and in attitudes suggestive of a well-trained poodle asking for a biscuit. Yet the general effect is pleasing, for the slender columns with their carved capitals are beautifully proportioned, and the Moorish ceilings, strongly reminiscent of those in the Alhambra at Granada, are superb. Through porch and patio floored and colonnaded with white marble and paneled with glorious old tiles arabesqued in soft yellow, peacock green, and Persian blue, we enter a typical Oriental palace, with guards in tawdry uniforms dozing in the corners and with the atmosphere of a somewhat garish stage-setting. A purely Oriental interior is nearly always pleasing, for your Arab’s sense of the beautiful is generally well developed. But once Europe is permitted to intrude, everything is spoiled, for the Oriental’s taste in regard to things European is quite untutored and garish. Cut-glass chandeliers, gilt clocks, oil paintings, and Louis Seize furniture are as absurd and out of the picture when introduced into a room with marble floors, tiled walls, and exquisitely fretted Moorish ceilings as were the horrible “Turkish corners” found in nearly every American home a generation ago.