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The Pont Sidi M’Cid, a suspension bridge dating to 1912, is the most arresting — step onto it and the gorge opens beneath you like a wound in the earth. At the Pont El Kantara, built on Roman foundations, the view back toward the city is one of those sights you find yourself mentally revisiting for years. The Ahmed Bey Palace, constructed in the early 19th century, is a riot of Andalusian tiles, painted ceilings and marble columns, the last grand statement of a Bey who knew the Ottoman era was ending and wanted, at least, to go out in style.

For religious architecture, the Emir Abdelkader Mosque is one of Algeria’s largest and  most graceful — a modern building that manages not to look like it was designed by committee. Wander the old Medina’s narrow streets at golden hour, eat a plate of chakhchoukha at a local restaurant, and let Constantine work on you at its own pace. It is a city that rewards patience.

3. Oran — The Radiant Magic

Oran is Algeria’s second city and, by general consensus, its most relaxed. There is something in the air here — a coastal looseness, a Méditerranée easy-goingness — that distinguishes it sharply from the intensity of Algiers or the gravity of Constantine. This is the city that gave the world Raï music, that raw, hybrid sound born from the collision of traditional Bedouin chant, Andalusian melody, French chanson and electric guitar. Khalid, one of its greatest living sons, still conjures it like a force of nature.

Climb up to Santa Cruz Fort on the Murdjadjo mountain above the city, and the whole of Oran fans out below you — the port, the French-era boulevards, the tiled domes, the sea stretching blue and flat toward Spain. The fort itself is a Spanish construction from the 16th century, with a chapel to the Virgin Mary at the summit that feels oddly tender in context. The Casbah here is smaller and more approachable than Algiers’, a warren of lanes around the Grand Mosque and the old Turkish quarter.

Down on the flat, the Place du 1er Novembre 1954 is where city life happens — café terraces, children on bicycles, old men playing chess. The Ahmed Zabana National Museum holds a serious natural history and ethnographic collection. And in August, the waterfront heaves with Algerians on holiday, the beaches at Madagh and Les Andalouses packed with families, the evenings thick with the smell of grilled fish and the sound of Raï drifting from open windows.

4. Annaba — Augustine’s Ghost Town

In 430 AD, as the Vandals laid siege to the city then known as Hippo Regius, its bishop — Aurelius Augustinus, a man who had spent decades rewriting the intellectual foundations of Western Christianity — died inside its walls. The city survived him, changed its name to Annaba, and the ruins of Hippo Regius still lie on a low hill above the sea, where a mosaic floor here and a forum column there remind you that one of the most extraordinary minds of the late ancient world walked this exact ground.