The Casbah of Algiers is one of those places that sum up the soul of a city. A World Heritage Site since 1992, it is the capital's Ottoman medina: a white labyrinth of stepped alleys tumbling towards the Mediterranean, with three- and four-storey houses that almost touch at the top, cool inner courtyards, fountains, mosques and palaces hidden behind discreet doors. Getting lost in it is like travelling five centuries back in time.
But the Casbah is not just a picturesque backdrop: it is a place steeped in history. This is where the power of corsair and Ottoman Algiers beat, and where, in the 20th century, much of the War of Independence was fought. Its alleys were the setting for the legendary Battle of Algiers in 1957, which is why the Casbah is also a national symbol of Algerian resistance against French colonialism.
This guide helps you explore it with purpose: which palaces and mosques to see, how to get around its stairways, why it is worth going with a guide and how to understand the ground you are walking on. The Casbah is fragile and partly run-down, but it is still alive and inhabited, and it remains the most authentic and moving experience in Algiers.
The Casbah took its current shape during the Ottoman regency (16th-19th centuries), when Algiers was the feared capital of the Barbary corsairs: the citadel (the 'qasba' that gives the neighbourhood its name) stood in the upper town, and houses, palaces and mosques crowded the hillside. Under French rule it was partly demolished and pushed to the margins, but it was reborn as the heart of the struggle for independence, the setting of the Battle of Algiers in 1957. Its full story is told on the Algiers history page.
Read the full history ↓The “white” capital, rising like an amphitheatre above the Mediterranean from a 10th-century Zirid town, heart of the corsair Regency and of Algerian resistance, with its World Heritage Casbah and the Roman Tipasa that captivated Camus.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
The word 'qasba' means 'citadel' or 'fortress' in Arabic, and it originally referred only to the fortification at the top of the hill of Algiers. Over time, the name spread to the whole old town that tumbles down the slope, from the citadel at the top all the way to the sea. Today 'the Casbah' is another name for the historic medina of Algiers: the old town with an Islamic street layout that came before the French colonial city.
Its origins go back to 944, when the Berber prince Buluggin ibn Ziri refounded Algiers on the ruins of Roman Icosium. During the Middle Ages, the city grew up the hillside following the logic of a Muslim medina: narrow, winding streets for shade and coolness, houses turned towards inner courtyards to protect privacy, and a clear order of spaces running from the public (mosques, souks, fountains) to the private (homes).
The shape we admire today, however, is mostly the work of the Ottoman period. Between the 16th and 19th centuries the Casbah filled with mosques, palaces and its distinctive tall, whitewashed houses, built to suit the steep slope. At its peak the medina is thought to have housed tens of thousands of people in a very small area, with clever arrangements for water, shade and movement.
From 1516 to 1830, Algiers was the capital of an almost independent Ottoman regency, famous and feared for its 'Barbary' corsairs, who raided the Mediterranean and took Christian captives as slaves. All that wealth and power centred on the Casbah. At the top stood the citadel, the seat of government. Down the slope were the mosques, the palaces of the great families and the deys, the Janissary barracks, the baths and the souks.
The medina's great monuments survive from that golden age: the Ketchaoua Mosque (17th century), the Djamaa el Djedid mosque ('the New', from 1660), the older Djamaa el Kebir ('the Great', an 11th-century Almoravid building), and palaces such as Dar Aziza, Dar Hassan Pacha and Dar Mustapha Pacha, with their colonnaded courtyards, tilework and wooden galleries. The Casbah was a complete, self-sufficient city, with its religious, commercial and social life perfectly organised.
This Ottoman Casbah was also where the episode that changed Algeria's history took place. In 1827, in the citadel, Dey Hussein struck the French consul with his fan (or fly whisk) during an argument. France used the gesture as a pretext and, in 1830, landed and conquered the city. The Ottoman regency came to an end, and with it the Casbah's golden age.
The arrival of the French in 1830 transformed Algiers, though not always to the Casbah's benefit. The colonisers tore down much of the lower town to make way for broad squares, boulevards and European-style buildings facing the port. This was the birth of colonial Algiers 'à la française', elegant and monumental, laid over the medina. The Casbah was cut back and pushed up the hillside, and its Muslim population grew ever more crowded.
For more than a century, while the European city grew with villas, theatres and avenues, the Casbah became poorer and more densely packed. It turned into the great 'native' quarter of Algiers: a world apart, overcrowded and humble, cut off from services and from power, but it kept its Arab-Berber identity and community life intact. It was the refuge of Algerians' culture, language and religion in the face of the colonial city.
This status as a working-class, closed-off, maze-like quarter, sidelined by colonial power but tightly knit, would prove decisive in the 20th century. Scorned and feared by the French authorities, the Casbah would become the perfect setting for underground resistance.
When the War of Independence broke out in 1954, the Casbah became the urban stronghold of the National Liberation Front (FLN) in the capital. In its impossible alleys, its connected rooftops and its houses full of nooks and crannies, fighters moved about, hid and organised the struggle. The famous Battle of Algiers was fought here in 1956 and 1957: the FLN launched a bombing campaign and a general strike, and the French army responded by taking the Casbah house by house.
The crackdown was relentless. French paratroopers sealed off the medina, carried out mass arrests and used torture systematically to dismantle the FLN network. Many episodes from that battle stayed etched in memory: the resistance and death of figures such as Ali la Pointe, blown up with his companions in a Casbah hideout in October 1957, and the role of the women who carried weapons and messages through its streets.
The Battle of Algiers became world-famous thanks to Gillo Pontecorvo's 1966 film of the same name, shot in those very streets with many of the real participants and now a film classic. Militarily, France broke up the FLN's urban network, but the scandal of torture and brutality helped turn public opinion against the war. The Casbah was established for ever as a symbol of Algerian resistance.
After independence in 1962, the Casbah kept its symbolic value but went into slow decline. Many better-off families moved to modern districts, houses were subdivided and overloaded, and lack of maintenance took its toll on fragile buildings (rammed-earth walls, timber, brick). Over the years some houses collapsed and the whole quarter was put at risk, even though it was still densely inhabited.
In 1992, UNESCO added the Casbah of Algiers to the World Heritage List, recognising it as an outstanding example of a historic Maghreb city and a unique testimony to a type of human settlement and to Islamic urban architecture adapted to difficult terrain. That international recognition spurred safeguarding and restoration plans, although the task is huge and progress is slow.
Today the Casbah lives with a constant tension between its fragility and its vitality. It is both an endangered heritage site and a living neighbourhood, with families, craftspeople, shops and a strong identity. Various projects, some with international support, are trying to restore its palaces and homes and bring back its splendour without driving out its residents. For travellers, walking through it means looking at once into the history of Algiers and into the challenge of preserving one of the most valuable and most threatened historic centres in the Mediterranean.
