16. Tizi Ouzou — The Heart of Kabylie
To understand Algeria without Kabylie is to miss one of the country’s most distinctive cultural threads. The Kabylie region, a mountainous, heavily forested area east of Algiers, is home to the Kabyle Berbers — a people with their own language (Tamazight), their own music (the late singer Matoub Lounès is a near-sacred figure here), their own architecture of olive-terraced hillsides and fortress-like villages, and a fierce political and cultural autonomy that has put them into periodic, dramatic conflict with the Algerian state.
Tizi Ouzou is Kabylie’s capital, a university city in a valley surrounded by the peaks of the Djurdjura mountains. The city itself is lively and modern, but the real reason to come is the landscape around it. Drive up into the Djurdjura range to the village of Aït Hichem or across to the ancient Berber village of Aït Benhaddou-like mountain settlements where houses of stone and ochre earth cling to ridgelines. The Gorges of Kerrata and the Gorges de la Chiffa nearby are stunning canyon landscapes. In spring, the mountain roads are lined with wild flowers; in summer, the Berber pottery and woven rugs sold at roadside markets are among the finest craft objects in the country.
