Europe - Algiers

Flight to Algiers, on a regular AirAlgeria flight.
Arrival in the morning. Reception at the airport by your English-speaking guide, transfer to the hotel and installation in the room.

After lunch, departure for a short city tour that will allow you to soak up the very special atmosphere that reigns in Algiers. We will take advantage of this short walk to visit the Museum of Fine Arts, little known, and possessing a rich collection of sculptures (Rodin, Carpeaux, Bourdelle…), ceramics from the 17th and 18th centuries, and paintings which constitute the collection most important of the museum (Chardin, Largillière, Delacroix, Chassériau, Courbet, Sisley, Monet, Redon, Matisse…).
We will end this first day with a visit to the Jardin d'Essais, also called the Botanical and Zoological Park. It contains a wide variety of rare and exotic plant essences. The park is laid out in 3 French, English and Japanese gardens; its paths are lined with giant bamboo, huge palm trees and dragon trees with tangled branches... The park's old ficus tree is more than a century and a half old. Animals from the zoo have been moved to Ben Aknoun. André Gide considered this garden to be one of the most beautiful in the world.

Dinner in town or at the hotel.
Night at the hotel in Algiers.

White Algiers

Breakfast at the hotel.

Departure for the visit of the Palais des Raïs, passing by the Place des Martyrs. This palace, built at the end of the 17th century to house the Ministry of the Navy, is an architectural ensemble comprising 4 buildings. The first was the Palais du Raïs: the walls, pierced with a multitude of small windows, are covered with multicolored mosaics that recall the luxury and refinement of an Ottoman era with an eye for detail. The carved ceilings are impressive. This palace, called Bastion 23, recalls the art of living of the corsairs who dominated the Mediterranean. The palace became, at the beginning of the French occupation, the residence of the rear admiral in charge of the management of the port; it was then restored and turned into a museum. In a wing of the palace, a Roman mosaic still bears witness to the distant past when Algiers called itself Ikosium. We will leave for a guided tour of the Casbah. Old medieval town of Algiers classified as World Heritage by UNESCO, which presents it as follows: "In one of the most beautiful maritime sites in the Mediterranean, overlooking the islets where a Carthaginian counter was installed from the 4th century BC , the Casbah is a unique type of medina, or Islamic city. A place of memory as much as of history, it includes the remains of the citadel, ancient mosques, Ottoman palaces, as well as a traditional urban structure (narrow streets, endless stairs leading down to the sea, etc.) associated with a large sense of community”. From the Place des Martyrs, the lower Casbah contains the most beautiful monuments and palaces of Algiers. This unit, which has been immortalized in several films, remains an emblematic living place of Algiers.

Traditional lunch in a house in the Casbah.

omage to the pilgrimage carried out by two pious Lyonnaises, in a nearby ravine, that the construction of this basilica was ordered by Monsignor Pavy. The latter rests at the foot of the basilica, which disappeared before the building was completed and was consecrated fourteen years later, on July 2, 1872, by Monsignor Lavigerie. The architect Fromageau built it on a Byzantine plan, surmounting it with a dome. This plan offers the particularity of being oriented with the choir to the southwest (instead of the east usually). Its symbolic and religious importance is summed up in this maxim inscribed in French, Arabic and Kabyle on the wall of the apse behind the altar: “Our Lady of Africa, pray for us and for the Muslims”.
Passage through the Monument du Martyr and the Pouillon district.
Brief visit to a ceramics workshop of the disciples of Boumehdi: Ceramist who participated a lot in the works of Pouillon.
Return to the hotel.

Dinner in town or at the hotel.
Night at the hotel in Algiers.