Algiers in 3 days: the city where the Barbary pirates ruled the Mediterranean from 1516 to 1830, the city of the Battle of Algiers (the 1956–57 urban guerrilla war that became the model for every subsequent urban insurgency), and the city of Albert Camus (who grew up here and set his greatest works in this landscape). The Casbah is UNESCO-listed. The Martyrs' Memorial is 92m tall and honors 1.5 million dead.
UNESCO World Heritage since 1992: the steepest, densest inhabited hillside in North Africa. The Ketchaoua Mosque (built 1794, converted to St Philip's Cathedral by the French in 1832, returned to a mosque at independence in 1962). The Palace of Hassan Pacha (1791). The Battle of Algiers (1956–57): the French Paratroopers vs the FLN in the alleys of this exact Casbah — the Pontecorvo film (1966) was shot here.
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideThree 40m concrete fins (political, military, diplomatic branches of the revolution) rising to a central flame-shaped cupola, with three 40m palm fins curving outward. Built 1982 for the 20th anniversary of independence. Panoramic view: the entire Bay of Algiers, the Casbah, the harbor, and on clear days the Roman ruins at Tipaza 70km west.
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideBuilt 1872 on the Bouzaréah cliff (120m above the bay): the Romano-Byzantine basilica with the mosaic inscription "Notre-Dame d'Afrique, priez pour nous et pour les musulmans" — written at the request of Cardinal Lavigerie, the first Cardinal of Algiers, as an act of interfaith reconciliation. The Black Madonna (a replica of Montserrat's). The terrace view of the entire bay.
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideCouscous: the semolina grain (steamed twice until each grain is separate) with a broth of lamb, chickpeas, turnips, courgettes, carrots and merguez (the North African spiced lamb sausage). Mechoui: the whole spit-roasted lamb basted with smen (fermented clarified butter) and cumin. The most important meal of the Algerian table.
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideThe Roman mosaics from Djémila (one of the best-preserved Roman cities in North Africa, UNESCO) and Timgad (the colonial city of Trajan, 2nd century CE, its original street grid intact after 1,500 years under desert sand). The Tassili n'Ajjer collection: 15,000 rock paintings from 6,000 BCE depicting the Green Sahara (when the Sahara was savannah with elephants, giraffes and hippopotami — the most dramatic evidence of the Sahara's recent verdant past).
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideFounded by the French colonial administration in 1832: the 200m allée of Bengal figs (Ficus benghalensis) whose aerial roots have interlocked into a continuous canopy over the avenue (the most photographed path in Algiers). 4,000 plant species. The 19th-century greenhouses (the most important Victorian tropical greenhouses surviving in North Africa).
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideThe Grande Poste (1910): designed by Henri Voinot in the Néo-Mauresque style (French Beaux-Arts structure + Andalusian decorative elements: horseshoe arches, zellige tilework, muqarnas vaulting). Boulevard Didouche Mourad: the "Champs-Élysées" of Algiers, the 2km French-era boulevard with the Algerian café terrace culture.
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideChorba frik: lamb on the bone simmered 2–3 hours with frik (roasted unripe durum wheat with a smoky, grassy flavor), tomatoes, onion, coriander and mint — the defining daily soup of Algeria. Pastilla: pigeon (or chicken) meat in spiced almond-cinnamon filling, in paper-thin warqa pastry, dusted with icing sugar (the Algerian variant differs from the Moroccan bastilla in the quail egg addition and the spice profile).
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideColonia Tipasensium: established by Emperor Claudius in the 1st century CE on the Berber city of Tipasa. The Basilica of Alexander (4th century CE), the Amphitheater, the Nymphaeum, the harbor ruins — on a cliff above the Mediterranean. The cemetery: the grave of Camus's mother (Camus grew up in Algiers, set "The Stranger" and "The Plague" in this landscape, wrote "Noces à Tipasa" (1936) about these specific ruins).
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideThe restored 16th–17th century Ottoman harbor bastion: the Barbary States operated from this city under Ottoman suzerainty, enslaving approximately 1.25 million Europeans between 1530 and 1780 (the most significant episode of European enslavement in the pre-modern period). The Palace of Rais (Dar Hassan Pacha) within: now a cultural center, the most intact surviving Barbary corsair-era palace.
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideThe 16th-century hammam of Sidi Barouk (the most historically significant surviving hammam in Algiers): the hot room (50–60°C), the kessa (the rough exfoliating mitt scrub by the kessala attendant: dead skin removed in grey rolls — the "kir"), the rhassoul volcanic clay mask (mixed with rose water and orange blossom water), the rinse and the cool room. The most important social institution in the traditional North African city.
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideMakroud: semolina dough stuffed with Deglet Nour dates (the "Finger of Light" — the most important date variety from the Ziban oasis of eastern Algeria), rose water and orange blossom water, cut in diamond shapes, deep-fried in clarified butter, soaked in honey. The farewell pastry of Algiers, on the terrace of the most important boulevard of the modern city.
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuide