Our contribution to the Cities’ Identity Through Architecture and Arts (CITAA) conference falls under theme 3, “Architecture, Memory, and History—Architectural Heritage and its Impact on Local Identity and Storytelling.“ By exploring written documents dating from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, we investigate the “ways of saying and doing” regarding the living spaces and monuments built in Tunis during that time. The aim is to shed light on the “memorial dimension” of the act of writing, as undertaken by local figures who, in their own way, described the city’s atmosphere. These include historians such as Seghir Ben Youssef (1691–1771), author of a chronicle detailing various aspects of city life in the eighteenth century; Ibn Abi Dhiaf (1804–1874); Bayram V (1840–1889), who authored a multi-volume chronicle on the history of Tunisia; and the architect Slimane el-Nîgrou (1832–1902), who wrote a work on the rules of restoration and construction. Through a retrospective reading and contextual analysis, we examine the role these figures may have played in a country that, from the second half of the nineteenth century through the French protectorate (1881–1956), underwent a significant modernization process. This period saw the construction of a series of monuments in an “eclectic-orientalist” style, influenced by European, particularly French and Italian, trends, to assert a new, modern identity. We argue that these writings, which combine various forms of scholarly literature—life stories, testimonies, notices, biographies, and technical manuals—contributed to the dissemination of the built heritage and the preservation of the fragile local architecture. These texts serve as memory traces, documenting past events and practices and helping to preserve knowledge that is at risk of being forgotten, while also advocating for heritage conservation.