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[living-algiers]

[living-algiers]

The “Casbah” , the city of interactions.

[living-algiers]

[living-algiers]

The core of the old Algiers, The “ Casbah ” is a historic district of Algiers including the old city inscribed on the World Heritage List of UNESCO since 1992. 

It constitutes the Turkish city around which rushed heterogeneous constructions. Originally the word “Casbah" referred to the citadel overlooking the city "the medina", gradually the term encompassed the city itself.  The fortifications that protected the Casbah, as well as the high and the low of the city have now disappeared.

 "Building their Casbah, the elders had reached the masterpiece of architecture and urbanism," said Le Corbusier.

[living-algiers]

[living-algiers]

When it is a question of contrasts, Algiers is doing well, by the way, from the porthole of the plane appears the vast bay of Algiers in all its beauty. A land sitting on the Mediterranean coast, bordered on both sides by small coves and vast beaches.

Algiers at night looks as if it is trying to swallow the Mediterranean Sea. Nice maze of streets! It's Algiers and its bay that seems ready to swallow a dozen boats.

Credits: ESA/NASA 133D0159

https://www.flickr.com/photos/thom_astro/32840951826240

[living-algiers]

A CITY OF CONTRASTS ....

[living-algiers]

[living-algiers]

[living-algiers]

[living-algiers]

[living-algiers]

A locality originally named by the Punics Ikosim (name meaning "the island of seagulls" according to Victor Bérard or "island of thorns" or "with owls" according Joseph Cantineau and Louis Leschi), when it acquired the status of Phoenician counter of importance, the foundation of Ikosim is before the 4th century BC. Remains of Campinian vases dating from the 3rd century BC. were discovered in a twenty meters deep in 1940. Already at the beginning of the first millennium BC J.-C., Ikosim was an important Phoenician counter.

[living-algiers]

The city is, however, what matters most, which should count the most. Because nothing is more than us. When it changes, we change it. " Eugène Guillevic (1907-1997)

To understand Algiers, it is more than necessary to make a flashback, and go back to see how its beginnings looked like, then compare it with its present? “remember that we only understand a city throught its past”, otherwise, it is Algiers not Dubai.

[living-algiers]

Living in Algiers is living its greatness, is living its contrast, Algiers with its brilliant white color, its largest avenues and narrow streets. When you go through Algiers, you go through the mirror. you arrive with a soul and you go with another, all new, sublime. Algiers changes a person with just a snap of fingers.

At first sight, Algiers seems scary, grandiose, 2000 words are not enough to describe 2600 years of history, a story that tells the passage of a dozen dynasties, a story that we recognize only through its lived, that story that gave  Algiers its whiteness.

Even stifled by pollution and lack of growth, Algiers remains indeed one of the most beautiful cities of the Mediterranean sea.

Algiers is like a child's game, a puzzle but not easy to assemble. So, take a seat, fasten well your seatbelts, I'll take you to discover Algiers, I'll take you to the heart of this city, this city that has suffered so much during the colonization and even after, I take you to Algiers to understand it, to live it. , to contemplate it day and night, I take you to Algiers to know its history, to know its treasures, I take you to Algiers to decipher its secrets, even if it turns out difficult, but I promise, that you will fall in love with this metropolis, this city will change the dark image that you have of Africa, and that for sure.

[living-algiers]

Political, administrative and economic capital of Algeria and a port of the Mediterranean. The agglomeration of Greater Algiers has 8 million inhabitants. Algiers is a complex metropolis but also a city very simple to seize: the sickle bay, the city hung over a small port and promontories provide good protection. Its expanses to the East, to the West in lateral ramifications amplify the impression of greatness. The city of Algiers is a labyrinth of alleys and dead ends; the stairs, very numerous and very varied (broad, narrow, high ...) are very practical to cross this architecture in cascades.

[living-algiers]

Algiers, a myriad of noises. The outstretched ear, we hear the rustling of the casbah, we expect water that does not come and whose absence created a disturbing echo in the pipes running under the city, from the Central Station to the Casbah, from Belcourt to Bab-el-oued. At dusk, shadows pass, furtive, as thrown from a painful past to an uncertain future.

How many crimes go unpunished behind the whitewashed walls? How much revenge dreamed under the protection of the Byzantine arcades? It is its mysteries that make Algiers this labyrinth where every detail of the great mosaic seems to contribute to the same goal: to lose himself.

https://www.babelio.com/livres/Colonna-Alger-ville-blanche-sur-fond-noir/299277

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The White Algiers, but first Mediterranean

Algiers is a horizontal city.