There is a precise moment, driving south from the Aurès mountains through their cedar-scented passes, when the landscape tips. The green hills become dust, the dust becomes sand, and suddenly you are at the edge of something enormous. That moment, that threshold, is Biskra.
The Romans knew this place. So did the Byzantines, the Zirids, the Ottomans. By the late 19th century, under French control, Biskra had become the most fashionable winter resort in North Africa — an oasis town of thermal baths, date-palm gardens and dramatic light that attracted writers and painters in quantities that a place of its modest size had no right to expect. André Gide wrote The Immoralist here. Oscar Wilde came to recuperate. Most famously, Henri Matisse spent two winters here and later said the light of Biskra had permanently changed how he used colour.
What draws you today is the same light, the same date-palm gardens — among the finest in the world, a forest of 100,000 palms in some estimates — the thermal waters of Hammam Salahine, and the knowledge that the Sahara, in all its immensity, begins just beyond the town’s last palm tree. Take a 4×4 into the dunes at sunrise, when the light is liquid and the sand turns the colour of saffron. Then come back to town for tea, sweet and black, under an awning in the market.
