3 Days in Oran

Start where the French put the heart of their town. The square, formerly Place d'Armes, is lined with the city hall of 1886 and the regional theater of 1908, now named after the playwright Abdelkader Alloula. The city hall is the showpiece, an eclectic building with a staircase of translucent onyx. Albert Camus called it a mairie prétentieuse, a pretentious town hall, and its festival hall lost its original decoration in a 1962 fire set by the OAS, the French settler terror group.

Look for the two bronze lions at the entrance, by the French sculptor Auguste Cain. They echo the old stories about the name Wahran, "place of lions", and locals call the building Dar El Sbouâ. Give it a short walk-around and a few photos.

Five minutes away stands the best illustration of what happened to Oran in 1962. The Cathedral of the Sacred Heart was built between 1903 and 1913 by Albert Ballu, the colonial government's architect, in a Romano-Byzantine style. His brick construction made the vaults sag a centimeter a day, until the Perret brothers were called in to reinforce it. It was consecrated in 1930, though its cement main altar never could be.

After most of the European population left, it became a library in 1984, known as the Aubert Library. Look at it from outside for the scale and the mixture of styles. Ballu and the Perrets also did the neo-Moorish railway station of 1913, which looks like a mosque with a clock for a minaret. Ask at the entrance whether visitors may look in.

Lunch is the dish Oran invented. Karantika, also spelled garantita, is a hot flan of chickpea flour, water, olive oil, salt and cumin, sold in bread by street vendors across Algeria. The name comes from the Spanish calentica, "nice and hot", a souvenir of the Spanish centuries.

Order it in a sandwich with harissa and eat it hot. Look for a vendor with a queue around the center.

The city museum is a short walk south and covers everything from prehistory to modern art. It began in 1882 as a municipal museum around two Roman mosaics from Portus Magnus, near Arzew. The present building dates from 1933 and opened on 11 November 1935 as the Demaëght Museum; since 1986 it carries the name of Ahmed Zabana, the independence fighter executed by the French on 19 May 1956. The address is 19 Boulevard Zabana.

The first floor tells the story of the independence war in Oran, with a list of local people executed between 1954 and 1962, and the fine arts section holds French Orientalists and Algerian painters, Eugène Fromentin among them. Give it an hour or two.

Walk to the sea for the end of the day. The Front de Mer, officially Boulevard de l'ALN, is the seafront boulevard the French built, said to be inspired by Nice's promenade, with cafés, restaurants and ice cream shops along it. The view takes in the harbor, the Santa Cruz fort on its mountain and the cliffs.

Order a coffee or an ice cream and walk its length among the evening crowd. Keep valuables out of sight.

Raï is the reason many people care about Oran. After the First World War the city, nicknamed little Paris, was full of cabarets, and out of that world came the cheikhs and the women called cheikhates, who rejected the refined classical poetry of Algerian music. The word raï means opinion or advice, a filler the singers repeated while they improvised the next line. By the 1940s Cheikha Rimitti was its best-known voice.

Its mixed dancing drew government-backed suppression. In the 1990s it turned dangerous: Cheb Hasni was murdered in Oran in 1994, and singers like Cheb Mami and Chaba Fadela moved to France. Cheb Khaled, and Mami with Sting on Desert Rose, took it worldwide. Tonight, listen to the recordings on the seafront and ask your hotel about live music. No venue could be verified for this guide.

Sidi El Houari is the old quarter at the foot of the mountain, named after the city's patron saint, a scholar who died in 1439. It was the first city center of Oran, once called the Casbah. Few buildings in Oran predate the French conquest, because the earthquake of 1790 saw to that, so what you see is mostly late Spanish, Ottoman and early French.

The Hassan Pasha Mosque is the one to look for, built in 1796 on the orders of Bey Mohamed el-Kebir and named after Hassan Pasha of Algiers, who contributed money from the ransom of Christian captives. Its octagonal minaret is covered in tiles. The quarter is rough in places, so go in daylight and keep your bag close.

The Bey's Palace is a short walk up from the mosque, inside the old Spanish citadel of Rosalcazar. It was the seat of the Ottoman bey of Oran in the 18th century, and after 1831 the home of the French military governor until 1962. It covers about 5.6 hectares, was classified in 2005 and survived the 1790 earthquake, which is rare here.

Look for the diwan, the council hall, entered through twelve arches. Quranic verses on its ceiling were partly replaced in the colonial period by praise of Napoleon III, still visible. Go for the Spanish and Ottoman layers, not for polished displays.

This is the image of Oran. The Fort of Santa Cruz sits about 400 m up on Murdjadjo mountain and was built by the Spanish between 1577 and 1604, after the Marquis of Santa Cruz decided in 1563 that the ridge had to be held. It was stormed in 1708, razed in 1735, rebuilt from 1738, partly destroyed in 1790 and restored by French engineers in 1856-60. From the walls you see the whole bay and the naval base of Mers El Kébir below.

Below the fort is the sanctuary of Notre-Dame de Santa Cruz. A cholera epidemic killed 1,172 people in Oran in 1849, and the first chapel marked its end after a procession and then rain. The bell tower dates from 1873, the basilica from 1959, and the chapel reopened in 2018 after four years of restoration. Even if you don't go in, the terrace has the best view in the city.

Eat a soup before the coast. Chorba is the national soup of lamb, tomato, vermicelli and herbs, and in western Algeria its cousin harira, with Andalusian roots, is the most popular soup of the region. Order the bowl with fresh bread.

Small restaurants around Sidi El Houari and the port serve both at lunch. Ask what the day's pot is. If you have a driver, ask where they eat.

Now go west. Les Andalouses is a bay resort 25 km west of the city, 28 by road. Its name probably comes from Andalusian Muslims who landed here after 1492. The village was designed by the French architect Fernand Pouillon and opened by President Boumediene in June 1973. A Punic necropolis with 70 graves was found here, so this coast was busy long before the resorts. The island of Plane sits 8 km offshore.

This is the place for a summer day of swimming. In November, expect a walk, a view and a meal, and check what is open before you commit to the ride.

On the way back, stop at Aïn El Turk, 15 km from Oran. Its name means "the fountain of the Turks": the janissaries of Algiers landed on this beach when they came to besiege the Spanish in Oran. The bay stretches about 8 km between Cap Falcon and the Pointe de Saint Roch, with sandy beaches broken by rocks.

Walk the front and eat grilled meat or fish where it is open. Many seaside places shut in winter, so ask your driver.

Start with the building that makes Tlemcen a capital of Andalusian art. The Almoravid emir Yusuf ibn Tashfin founded the Great Mosque in 1082, when he founded the city of Tagrart, one of the two settlements that became Tlemcen. His son Ali ibn Yusuf embellished it, and the ribbed dome before the mihrab was finished in 1136. The Zayyanid sultan Yaghmorasan added the minaret in 1236.

Inside, the prayer hall is divided into 13 aisles by horseshoe arches. The mosque is in use, so you may only see the entrance or courtyard, and visits depend on prayer times. Dress modestly and ask before you go in.

A few minutes' walk away is the royal citadel of the Zayyanids, the dynasty that ruled Tlemcen from 1236 to 1554. Yaghmurasen Ibn Zyan built the Mechouar in the mid-13th century, and tradition says he left the old palace beside the Great Mosque because the minaret overlooked his harem.

What you see is partly a reconstruction: one courtyard building was rebuilt in 2010-11, when Tlemcen was Capital of Islamic Culture, and the old walls survive. Come for the layout and the sense of a medieval court, not for original interiors.

Lunch is lamb. Mechoui, lamb slow-roasted over coals until it falls off the bone, is the centerpiece of celebrations across Algeria, and grill restaurants in central Tlemcen serve it by weight with bread. Finish with a glass of mint tea.

Tlemcen is called the Pearl of the Maghreb and the African Granada. Ask what the house does best.

Mansourah is a medieval city built for a siege. The Marinid sultan Abu Yaqub Yusuf besieged Tlemcen from 1299, and as the blockade dragged on he built a camp of houses, baths, a great mosque and palaces with walls and towers, named al-Mansura, "the victorious". On 13 May 1307 a slave killed the sultan, the siege ended, the Marinids went home to Fez and the Zayyanids pulled the town down.

What remains is part of the wall and the minaret of the mosque, 38 m tall, of which only three sides survive. It is about 5 km west of the center, so use a taxi, and ask it to wait.

End with the view. The cable car runs from the Grand Bassin park up to the Lalla Setti plateau, which dominates the city to the south. It opened in 2009, closed in 2015 for rehabilitation and reopened on 3 November 2018. The ride takes about five minutes over 1,689 m, and it runs from 07:30 to 19:30 every day except Sunday.

At the top you look down over the old town and the hills. Take a jacket and be back at the car before dark for the drive to Oran.