Culture, Society & Diaspora
Culture, Society & Diaspora
Sites of historical and cultural significance, covered for their meaning rather than as travel destinations.
In Algeria’s north-east, close to the Tunisian border, sits a city that rarely gets the attention its stones deserve. Tébessa carries a Numidian past, the Roman name Theveste, a major role in early Christian North Africa, a Byzantine fortress phase,…
High above Algiers Bay, the Casbah — UNESCO’s official English spelling is “Kasbah”, while “Casbah” remains common in English-language writing, and القصبة in Arabic — climbs the hillside in a tangle of whitewashed houses, stepped lanes and covered passages. It…
Constantine did not so much build its bridges as it was compelled to. The historic core of Constantine — often described as the capital of eastern Algeria — sits on a remarkable natural fortress: a rock plateau carved on nearly…
On a hilltop plateau about 70 kilometres west of Algiers, there is a circular stone tomb the size of a small stadium. It has been standing for roughly two thousand years. Scholars have argued about who built it, and who…
The Jardin d’Essai du Hamma — also known as El Hamma Botanical Garden or simply Jardin d’Essai — is one of Algiers’ most distinctive public spaces. Spread across roughly 32 hectares in the capital’s El Hamma district, it combines a…
Ghardaia is the principal town of the M’Zab Valley, a cluster of five fortified hilltop settlements rising from the rocky plateau of Algeria’s northern Sahara. Founded by Ibadi communities—ancestors of today’s Mozabites—from the early 11th century, it remains the spiritual…