| Summary: | The Medina of Mahdia is a historical place that represents in its traditional urban fabric a specific built heritage of the region and testifies to an authentic know-how of the local population. This "Medina" or "Arab city" is formed by an organic and compact fabric with mainly the black vestibule or Skifa Kahla, the mosques, the souks, the narrow and winding streets and dead ends as well as the introverted houses with patios, telling the old time of the ancestors by having this richness of meaning, values and heritage resources which reflects the identity of the local population. The ornamentation of the rooms, the paintings on the walls and ceilings, the wooden furniture, the carved door frames, the richly decorated patios and facades represent the identity card of the former Fatimid capital, worthy of being valued, preserved and passed on to the new generations. The awareness of heritage is strongly present among the local population. Thus, the actions of the patrimonialization are more concretized thanks to the concerned social grouping and the local association ASMM, which is already formed by natives of Mahdia.Our research focuses on the heritage process of traditional houses in the Medina of Mahdia, highlighting the stages of this heritage process, the current state of certain houses, the challenges of material conservation, and the fundamental role of heritage actors, including the local population, associations and institutions. Our aim is to answer two central questions. How does the local population take action in the patrimonialization and/or transformation of its own dwellings, and to what extent has it participated in the conservation and devaluation of the architectural heritage? What are the causes and phenomena that influence the heritage process of traditional houses and sometimes hinder its progress? The present paper is composed of three additional parts. Firstly, we present the Medina of Mahdia, the characteristics of its built heritage and the particularities of the traditional Mahdadi house. In addition, we explain the research method, the instruments used and the nature of the data collected. Secondly, we interpret the results of our fieldwork to analyse the heritageization of traditional houses and the practices of the local community, revealing the causes and phenomena that influence the heritage process in a direct and indirect way. The third and last part highlights the inhabitant transformations that have contributed to a heritage dynamic in the Medina and have led to substantial modifications of the ancient architecture.
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