Colour me blue (and white)

An artist put Sidi Bou Said on the map.

The most famous picture of Tunisia was painted quickly on Easter Monday in 1914. On that afternoon, two Swiss artists, Paul Klee and August Macke, arrived in the cliff-top village of Sidi Bou Said. Klee and Macke made some preliminary studies of a garden gate and, before shooting off to Carthage, Macke sketched the outside of a café with a white rectangular minaret looming over it. Two years later he was killed at the Battle of Verdun, but his watercolour of Sidi Bou Said has had an enduring impact.

Today German, French and English tourists arrive in their busloads, trek past the stall holders on imasse Thameur and photograph Macke's view of Café des Nattes. It is instantly recognisable. Nothing has changed except for the pine at the bottom of the steps. Most visitors don't go any further. The 22 steps up into the café are steep and its interior seems very much the preserve of local men.

Actually, the café is worth a proper visit, as is the whole of Sidi Bou Said. Once a working village it is now home to art galleries and the seriously wealthy: Sidi has become Tunisia's chicest spot. But, you don't have to be well off to sit in the Café des Nattes. The service is relaxed and its quiet atmosphere is broken only by the song of a caged canary.

While the café's interior has Islam's holy greens and reds, every other building in Sidi is painted in an attractive combination of light blue and whitewash. We have a French banker, Baron Rodolphe d'Erlanger, to thank for this. In 1912 he proposed a bylaw forbidding any other colour schemes.

So taken was the baron with Sidi that he built his own home here, a palace known as Nejma Ezzahra (Star of Venus). However, my tour of Sidi starts on a humbler road, rue Hedi Zarouk. Here I quickly found a flight of steps that connect with the mosque whose minaret Macke immortalised in 1914. A small building is dedicated to Abu Said Kalafa, the 13th-century sidi (or saint) who gave his name to the village. Abu Said's tomb is in the mosque which itself leads on to rue Cheick Bahri, a series of yet more light-blue doorways and whitewashed walls.

Turning into rue Ettoumi, I soon found myself opposite Dar Said, once the residence of the wealthy Toumi family and now a hotel. Dar in Arabic usually denotes the principal residence and this dar doesn't disappoint. Within these walls the Tunisian designer Kaali Moncef has created a sequence of restrained courtyards, marble baths, minimalist rooms and mosaic fountains.

Sidi has other places to eat and drink beyond the Café des Nattes and Hotel Dar Said. Both the Restaurant Aux Bon Vieux Temps and Café Sidi Chabaane on rue Hedi Zarouk make the most of a stunning view across the bay to Cap Bon, but neither quite compares with Dar Said for splendour or with des Nattes for idiosyncratic charm.

Following rue Hedi Zarouk down towards the cliff top brings the visitor to a precipitous drop over the harbour. This crumbling scree slope was what all of Sidi looked like back in BC times when Dido was Queen of Carthage.

Heading back to the visitors' car park I looked for Baron d'Erlanger's Nejma Ezzahra on rue du 2 mars 1934. From the baron's entrance hall, with its channels of flowing water, to the bedrooms with their gilded ceilings, Star of Venus lives up to its name.

Sadly, you will look in vain for a ribat or fort in Sidi Bou Said because, in the 19th century, the French demolished them to build the lighthouse on avenue Taieb Mehili. There's also a truly stunning view of the Bay of Tunis. What a shame Macke didn't live to paint that, too.

Wigmore Holidays (020-7836 4999; www.aspectsoftunisia.co.uk) and Cadogan (023-808 28302; www.cadoganholidays.com) offer seven nights at the Hotel Dar Said from £674 per person, including flights, transfers and b&b accommodation.