Algiers

Algiers began as the small Roman port of Icosium on a shore already used by Phoenician traders. It was refounded in the 10th century by the Zirid prince Bologhine ibn Ziri as El Djazaïr, "the islands", after the islets that sheltered its harbour, and the name became the country's own. The town grew slowly under successive Berber dynasties until the early 16th century, when the corsair brothers Aruj and Hayreddin Barbarossa took it and placed it under Ottoman protection.

For three centuries Algiers was the seat of the Regency, a semi-independent Ottoman state whose fleet dominated the western Mediterranean, taking ships and captives and drawing tribute from European powers. The wealth of those years built the Casbah that stands today: the citadel at the top, the palaces of the rulers and the tall courtyard houses packed along its lanes.

A French fleet landed at Sidi Fredj in 1830 and the city fell within weeks. Under French rule the lower town was cleared and rebuilt with arcaded boulevards, squares and a great port, while the Casbah remained the Algerian city. During the war of independence it was the setting of the Battle of Algiers in 1956–57, and in 1962 the city became the capital of an independent Algeria as most of its European population left. The 1990s civil conflict brought years of violence to the capital and its suburbs, and in 2019 the Hirak protest movement filled the central boulevards week after week.

Algiers has an urban culture of its own, separate from the countryside around it. Its music is chaâbi, a popular style led by the mandole and shaped in the cafés of the Casbah, associated above all with El Hadj M'Hamed El Anka and, in exile songs, with Dahmane El Harrachi. Andalusian classical music is kept alive here by long-standing amateur associations, and raï, rap and Kabyle song all have large audiences in the city.

It is also the country's publishing and intellectual capital, with the national library, the universities, the newspapers and an autumn book fair that draws enormous crowds. The city was home or subject to writers from Albert Camus, who grew up in Belcourt, to Assia Djebar and Kateb Yacine, and its cinema history is bound up with the war of independence.

Daily manners follow Algerian norms: long greetings, coffee or tea before business, and a strong obligation of hospitality once someone is a guest. Dress in the centre ranges from jeans and trainers to the hijab, and public life is male-dominated in cafés while families dominate the seafront in the evening. Football is followed closely, with several city clubs whose supporters fill the stadiums, and weddings are loud, late and often spill into the street.

Algiers Province, which takes in the city and its suburbs, counted just under three million people at the 2008 census, and the urban area was estimated at 4.3 million in 2025, spread from the bay up onto a wide amphitheatre of hills. It is the seat of government, the central bank, the state energy company and the main universities, and its port handles much of the country's imports, so salaries and rents are higher here than anywhere else in Algeria.

Most people live in apartment blocks: French-era buildings in the centre, 1970s estates on the hills, and large new housing programmes on the eastern and southern edges, built to relieve a long-running shortage. Commutes across the Mitidja plain and along the bay are slow, which is why the metro, trams and suburban trains matter so much. The Casbah, once the densest part of the city, has lost population as houses have collapsed or been abandoned, and restoration work there is a constant subject of public argument.

The day starts early with coffee and bread, offices and schools run until the afternoon, and the streets fill again in the evening, especially along the seafront and around the central squares. Unemployment among young people, housing, water supply in dry summers and the cost of imported goods are the everyday concerns, and the city's cafés are where they are discussed.

Algiers cooking is city food with Ottoman and Andalusian roots, lighter and more spiced than mountain cooking. Chorba beida, a white soup of chicken, vermicelli and chickpeas finished with egg and lemon, is a common first course; dolma of stuffed courgettes and peppers, tajine zitoune of chicken or lamb with olives, a stew associated with Algiers itself, and chtitha of meat in a red sauce appear at family tables. Bourek, thin pastry rolled around minced meat or cheese and fried, is eaten all year and especially in Ramadan.

The street food is mhadjeb, a thin semolina crêpe folded around a slow-cooked filling of tomato, onion and pepper and cooked on a flat griddle, sold hot in Bab El Oued and around the markets. Garantita, a baked chickpea-flour flan better known in the west of the country, turns up here too, and the fishing harbour below the Casbah grills sardines and fries small fish through the day.

Pastry matters a great deal. Shops sell makroud of semolina and dates, baklawa, griwech dipped in honey, and in Ramadan trays of qalb el louz, a syrup-soaked semolina and almond cake. Alongside them sit French-style cakes and good bread, a survival of the colonial period. Mint tea and small strong coffees accompany all of it, and fresh orange juice comes from the citrus groves of the Mitidja plain just inland.