From the Casbah, head uphill to the Basilique Notre-Dame d’Afrique, perched on a cliff above the sea with an inscription above the altar that reads, with startling ecumenism: “Our Lady of Africa, pray for us and for the Muslims.” Below, the Jardin d’Essai du Hamma is one of North Africa’s great botanical gardens, all rustling palms and banyan trees. Do not leave without standing before the Maqam Echahid, the three-pronged triumphal monument to Algeria’s independence martyrs — brutal, elegant, utterly singular — and the Bardo National Museum, where Roman mosaics fill gallery after gallery like colour-saturated dreams.
2. Constantine — The City That Levitates
Constantine does not ease you in gently. The city rises from a plateau cut on almost all sides by the Rhumel Gorge — a chasm up to 500 metres deep in places, its walls streaked rust and ochre, with the river glinting faintly in the dark below. The old city sits at the edge of this void like something from a fairy tale, and its seven bridges span the gorge with a dramatic confidence that makes you stop mid-step to look.
