Kasbah of Algiers

Kasbah of Algiers

The Kasbah of Algiers is located in the municipality of Kasbah in the wilaya of Algiers. It bears witness to the details of the Ottoman period and the stage of the French occupation, as well as the Algerian revolution against the French occupation, which lasted 132 years. Despite the age of its neighborhoods, it has preserved its historical heritage engraved inside homes and shops, in alleys, on walls, windows and old doors that tell a thousand stories. As many describe it as one of the most beautiful maritime sites of the Mediterranean with a unique type of medina, the Casbah of Algiers is interesting on many levels. It represents a human civilization heritage based on a fusion of Mediterranean, Muslim and traditional culture. It is renowned as well by the vestige of its monuments, mosques, citadels and Ottoman palaces. The medina of Algiers is divided into two parts: the Lower Casbah and the Upper Casbah. If the first shelters the most beautiful mosques as well as the most sumptuous palaces bordered by an urban structure based on the values of the Muslim community, the second proves its ingenuity of construction by its winding and exclusively pedestrian streets as well as its white houses. Despite the deterioration of the Kasbah due to natural and human damages, the splendor of the Kasbah remains powerful, a city that holds and protects the history and soul of the country.

The historical city of Miliana

Miliana is located in the province of Ain Defla, in northwestern Algeria. The city is built at an altitude of 740 meters on a rocky platform with abrupt contours projecting from the southern slope of Mount Zaccar which covers it entirely to the north. It dominates, to the east and south, the Chelif valley and to the west a large plateau which extends to the Ouarsenis chain. Miliana was founded in the 10th century by Yūsuf Prince Buluggin ibn Ziri, of the Zirid dynasty on the site of the former Roman town of Zucchabar. Populated since the antiquity under the Romans, the city is now inhabited by descendants of Andalusians, Kourouglis and Berbers from Zaccar. “Full of wealth” as the name of the city suggests, Miliana is enclosed by walls built on Berber and Turkish foundations. The centre of the tree-shaded modern sector is the Place Cornot (or Place de l’Horloge) with its clock tower, formerly a minaret. The older Arab quarter to the northwest contains a covered marketplace and the Moorish-style Mosque of Sidi Ahmed ben Yousef, object of a biannual pilgrimage. Below the town are orchards, vineyards, and gardens. The ample water supply from the furnishes electric power for flour mills, tile factories, and other light industries. Strolling through its narrow streets lined with plane trees reveals a part of the history of the historic city at each stop. Some monuments dating from the 18th to the 19th centuries remain today.