Constantine

The rock above the Rhumel was settled long before Rome. As Cirta it was the capital of the Numidian kings, the seat of Massinissa in the 2nd century BC and the prize fought over in the war against Jugurtha. Its position — a plateau nearly encircled by a gorge — made it one of the strongest natural fortresses in North Africa, and it prospered under Roman rule as the head of a group of colonies in a rich grain country. Destroyed during the civil wars of the early 4th century, it was rebuilt and renamed after the emperor Constantine, and it has carried that name ever since.

The city passed through Vandal, Byzantine, Arab and Berber hands and remained the regional capital under each. Under the Ottoman Regency it was the seat of the beylik of the east, and its last bey, Ahmed, built the palace that still stands in the old town. He held Constantine against a French assault in 1836 and lost it in October 1837, when a second and much larger expedition breached the walls after a short siege; the fighting and the storming of the town were severe.

Colonial rule cut a French quarter into the old city, threw the two great bridges of 1912 across the gorge and turned Constantine into an administrative centre. It was also a centre of Algerian intellectual life: Abdelhamid Ben Badis taught here and founded the reformist Association of Algerian Muslim Ulama in 1931. After independence the population multiplied, the medina decayed and partly collapsed, and the city spread onto the plateau, above all into the new town of Ali Mendjeli. A tramway opened in 2013 and the cable-stayed Salah Bey viaduct in 2014, and Constantine was named Arab Capital of Culture in 2015.

Constantine thinks of itself as the scholarly and religious capital of Algeria, an old bourgeois city of families that trace themselves back for generations, with a reserved manner quite unlike the openness of Oran. Ben Badis and the reformist ulama movement are a central part of that self-image, and the Islamic university named for Emir Abdelkader continues it.

Its music is malouf, the local form of the Andalusian classical tradition brought to the Maghreb by refugees from Muslim Spain, and the city treats it as its own. Orchestras of oud, violin, qanun and darbouka play long suites at weddings, concerts and religious gatherings; the singer and violinist Mohamed Tahar Fergani, known as the Nightingale of Constantine, made the style familiar far beyond the city.

Craft and dress carry the same conservatism. Coppersmiths still hammer trays and pots in the old town, embroidery in gold thread is a local speciality, and the gandoura of Constantine — a dress of velvet worked with gold — is worn at weddings. The black mlaya, a veil once worn by older women of the city, is now rare. Henna nights, long wedding feasts and the exchange of trays of sweets between families mark the social calendar, and Friday prayer and Ramadan set the rhythm of the year.

Around 450,000 people live in the city proper, with several hundred thousand more in the surrounding communes and in Ali Mendjeli, the planned town on the plateau to the south that has absorbed much of the region's growth. The old medina has lost population steadily as families move to newer housing, and stretches of it have been demolished or have fallen down.

The economy is based on administration, health, trade and above all education: Constantine's universities draw students from across the east, and there are mechanical and pharmaceutical industries in the outer districts. Wheat and barley farming on the surrounding high plains and food processing feed into the city's markets, and a good deal of trade is informal.

The day starts early, with markets crowded in the morning, offices and schools working through to the afternoon and cafés filling in the evening. Getting around shapes daily life more than in most cities: people cross the gorge by bridge, tram, cable car or a long detour, and traffic through the narrow centre is slow. Housing pressure, congestion, the condition of the old town and youth unemployment are the standing complaints, and the move of institutions out to Ali Mendjeli continues to change the balance between old city and plateau.

Constantine has the most elaborate kitchen in eastern Algeria, and its cooking is a matter of civic pride. Chakhchoukha is the signature: a dish of Chaoui origin now eaten across the east, in which flatbread or broken baked bread is soaked in a spiced meat and tomato sauce and served in a wide dish for sharing. Trida, hand-cut squares of pasta in a tomato sauce with chicken and chickpeas, is the dish of family occasions, and rechta, fine hand-rolled noodles in a pale broth with turnip, appears at religious festivals.

Ramadan brings its own repertoire — chorba frik, the tomato and green-wheat soup that breaks the fast, bourek, fried pastry rolls of meat, onion and cheese, and salads and pastries laid out together. Weddings call for sweeter cooking alongside the savoury, with dried fruit, almonds and cinnamon in the meat dishes as well as in the pastries.

Sweets are the other speciality. Trays of baklawa, makroud filled with dates, griwech twisted and dipped in honey, and almond pastries are made in quantity for weddings and Eid and sold from patisseries across the centre. Coffee is drunk strong and black, mint tea is poured long, and fresh orange and lemon juice appear on café counters in winter, when the citrus of the coastal valleys comes in.