The thing everyone comes to Tamanrasset to do — and the thing that justifies every kilometre of the journey — is Assekrem. A hermitage built in 1905 by the French priest-explorer Charles de Foucauld sits on a plateau 80 kilometres from town at 2,700 metres altitude, above the cloud line, above the volcanic chaos of the Hoggar massif. The sunrise from Assekrem is consistently listed among the world’s great natural spectacles. The light, rising over a landscape that looks like another planet, is something you simply cannot describe to someone who hasn’t been there.
Tamanrasset is also the cultural capital of Algeria’s Tuareg people — nomadic Berber pastoralists with a musical tradition (the imzad, a one-stringed bowed instrument played by women), a silver jewellery craft of extraordinary refinement, and a code of desert hospitality that will leave you well fed, well caffeinated on mint tea, and grateful.
12. Béjaïa — The City That Gave Europe Its Numbers
It was from the port city of Béjaïa — then known as Bugia — that the Italian mathematician Leonardo Fibonacci sailed home in the early 13th century after studying with the city’s Arab scholars, bringing with him the Hindu-Arabic numeral system that would replace Roman numerals across Europe and make modern mathematics possible. The world owes its ability to count properly, in no small part, to a medieval Algerian port city.
