Algiers is an enchanting city. Its eclectic style is immediately apparent in a stratification of eras that have left their mark. It is difficult to describe this Mediterranean and exotic Paris, which among the elegant 19th-century palaces, whitewashed with lime and decorated with wrought iron, preserves its Arab identity, recalling distant echoes of epic Barbary corsairs.
Algiers La Blanche, perched on sloping heights, opens up in a continuous up and down as far as the port built on a wide crescent-shaped bay. The white kasbah, the old town dating from the 16th century, contains much of the city’s charm and mystery. It dominates the bay at the top of the hill and it was here that the Ottomans, Barbarossa and Suleiman the Magnificent, ruled and organised their wars against Spain.
Unique in its kind, it has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In its intricate maze of steep alleyways, arches, squares, hidden corners, stairways, craft shops, fountains and tumbledown buildings, you can breathe in all the charm of a timeless atmosphere.
The ancient mosques and historic 17th-century residences almost act as a hinge between the old city and the new one, the 19th-century Algiers, built in the lower part by the French. Were it not for the blinding white of the lime and the turquoise window frames, reminiscent of the colours of the Mediterranean, the elegant buildings with their wrought-iron railings and wide boulevards bordered with flowerbeds would be more reminiscent of the Belle Époque.
El Djazair (its name in Arabic) with its white dress embellished by the outlines of the ancient mosques of Ketchaoua, Jamaa el-Kibir and Jamaa el-Jedid, the Independence Monument, its museums, the Ottoman Bastion 23, the marvellous Jardin d’Essai, the Basilica of Notre Dame d’Afrique, will demurely and maliciously reveal its beauties, like a true odalisque… who also dances the can-can.