This paper documents and interprets the trajectory of ethnographic museums in Tunisia over nearly a century, demonstrating changes and continuities in role, setting and architecture across shifting ideological landscapes. The display of everyday culture in the Middle East is often looked down upon as being kitsch and old-fashioned. My research shows that ethnographic museums in Tunisia have been highly significant sites in the definition of social identities. It is argued that these museums, both in their processes of conception behind the scenes and in their scenography itself, have worked to diffuse and naturialise social, economic and political tensions. The presentation excavates the evolution of paradigms in which Tunisian popular identity has been expressed through the ethnographic museum, from the modernist notion of 'indigenous authenticity' under colonial time, to efforts at developing a Tunisian ethnography after Independence, and more recent conceptions of cultural diversity since the revolution. Based on a combination of archival research in Tunisia and in France, participant observation and interviews with past and present protagonists in the Tunisian museum field, my work brings to light new material on an understudied area.