A white city stacked on a hill above the sea, with an Ottoman old town, French boulevards and Roman ruins an hour away. Planned day by day.
Photo: Ludovic Courtès, CC BY-SA 4.0
Algiers is a city you should see first from the water. It is built on a hill that tips straight into the bay, and the Arabic name, al-Jazair, means "the islands", after the rocks that once sat in front of the harbor. Phoenicians traded here, Rome had a town called Icosium, and the old city above the port was laid out by the Zirid dynasty in the 10th century. In 1516 the local ruler invited the corsair brothers Oruç Reis and Hayreddin Barbarossa to help him throw out the Spanish. Oruç had the ruler killed and took the town for himself, and for the next three centuries Algiers was a Mediterranean power in its own right, until the French landed in 1830.
That layering is the point of the place. The Casbah, the UNESCO-listed old town, is a maze of stairs and Ottoman courtyards where deliveries still go by donkey, and below it sit white French boulevards that could pass for a Paris with a better view. Add a concrete memorial to the independence war, a 265 m minaret that is the tallest in the world, and Roman and Mauretanian ruins on the coast, and you get a city that is not easy, not polished and not set up for visitors, which is also why it rewards them. Five days is the right length: the sights are spread over hills, some need a guide, a few are closed on Fridays, and the best day trip eats a whole day.
The plan keeps each day in one area. Day one is the Casbah and the lower town, day two the French-era center and the hill with the Bardo museum, day three the Martyrs' Memorial and the Jardin d'Essai, day four a day trip to Tipaza and Cherchell, and day five the Great Mosque and the bay. Start on a Saturday if you can: it keeps every day away from Friday, when many places close or run short hours, and Friday is a good day to arrive or rest. For the country as a whole, see Algeria. Read the visa and money tips before you book anything, because Algeria is not a country you can improvise your way into.
Every stop from the plan below, colored by day. Pick a day to see its route.
Ketchaoua and the Ottoman palaces in the morning, a guided walk up through the Casbah, then the corsairs' palaces by the sea.
The neo-Moorish post office and the boulevards, a cathedral and two museums on the hill, then Notre-Dame d'Afrique above the sea.
A metro ride to the botanical garden, the fine arts museum, a cable car up to the Martyrs' Memorial and dinner above the city.
A day on the coast road to a Mauretanian royal tomb, the Roman ruins at Tipaza and the old capital of Cherchell.
The world's tallest minaret, a walk along the bay, and a last evening above the city.
Everything today is within a mile or so of Place des Martyrs, but the Casbah is built on stairs, so it feels bigger than the map. The UK Foreign Office advises visiting the Casbah with a good local guide and telling your hotel your plans. Book one a day ahead. Wear shoes with grip: the lanes are steep, and in November they are often wet.
Start at the foot of the Casbah, where the old town meets the square the French cut out of it. Place des Martyrs exists because the French demolished a large part of the lower Casbah after 1830, and the Ketchaoua Mosque is the building that best tells what happened next. A notarial document dates the Ketchaoua Mosque to 1611-12, and an inscription says it was rebuilt in 1793-94. In December 1831 French troops forced the worshippers out, and on Christmas Day 1832 it was consecrated as the Cathedral of St Philippe. The old building was pulled down between 1845 and 1860 and replaced by a new cathedral with Moorish and Byzantine touches. After independence in 1962 it became a mosque again.
Look at the facade and the flight of steps up to the door, then at Dar Aziza on the square, a 16th-century house that lost its top floor in the earthquake of 1716 and later served as the archbishop's residence. Whether non-Muslim visitors are let into the mosque varies, so ask your guide.
A few steps from the mosque is one of the best-kept Ottoman palaces in the Casbah. Mustapha Pacha, a future dey, built it in 1798-99, and it was confiscated after his assassination in 1805 and later housed the national library. The museum conversion began in 2007, and it now holds the national museum of miniatures, illumination and calligraphy. The entrance is at 12 rue des Frères Mecheri.
Go for the courtyard, the galleries and the tile work, not for a long museum visit. Entry is sometimes free on International Museum Day (18 May).
The Casbah of Algiers has been UNESCO-listed since 1992, and its name just means "citadel". The town was laid out by the Zirids in the 10th century and became the seat of power under the Regency. It drops about 118 m from the citadel to the sea, no car can enter, and the triangular mass of white houses once looked from the bay like a pyramid.
It is also a lived-in, struggling neighborhood. Of the 1,200 Moorish houses recorded in 1962, only about fifty have been restored, and around 250 have collapsed. Estimates of the population run from 40,000 to 70,000. That is why a guide matters: they know the lanes, which houses can be entered, and the story of the 1957 Battle of Algiers. French paratroopers captured the FLN leader Yacef Saadi on 23 September 1957 at 3 Rue Caton, and in October the fighter Ali la Pointe died when they blew up his hideout at 5 Rue des Abderrames, killing seventeen civilians as well.
Ask the guide to include Jamaa el Kebir, the Casbah's oldest mosque (built in 1097 by the Almoravids), and the citadel at the top, the old dey's seat, under restoration for years and maybe closed or scaffolded. Keep your bag in front of you, because pickpockets work the Casbah.
Couscous is Algeria's national dish, and on Fridays it is a family ritual: steamed semolina grains under a stew of lamb or chicken and vegetables with chickpeas. The Casbah and the streets around Place des Martyrs have small restaurants that serve it at lunch, and a guide will know which one is open that day.
It can be made with beef, lamb, chicken or just vegetables, and in some regions it is served dry, as masfouf, with raisins and dates. Ask what the house version is and take that. Make this your main meal of the day, because the afternoon is long.
Walk down to the sea wall and the Palais des Raïs, the palace of the corsair captains and one of the few pieces of the medina still at the water's edge. Cannons still point out to sea from its walls. The complex is three palaces and six small fishermen's houses, restored and used as a cultural center. It stands where 1 Novembre 1954 street meets rue Mohamed Rachid Amara, and it has been a cultural center since 1994.
Palace 18 is the one to see: a patio with marble columns and tiled walls, plus the old kitchen and a hammam. In house 15, a prayer room, the mihrab is still in place, and the covered passage called Sabbat el Hout ("the fish passage") is named after a carved fish at its entrance. Finish on the terrace, where the breeze off the sea is the best cure for a day in the Casbah.
Close the day with a glass of mint tea and a sweet. The tea is green with fresh mint and plenty of sugar, served in small glasses as a sign of hospitality, and the sweet to order is makroudh: a semolina pastry stuffed with date paste and soaked in honey. Its cousin kalb el louz ("the almond's heart") is a semolina cake with an almond center, soaked in syrup.
Pastry shops and cafés around Place des Martyrs sell both. Sit down and watch the square.
Today you climb: from the post office at sea level up Rue Didouche Mourad to the hill with the Bardo, then by taxi to the basilica on its cliff. Time the basilica for the afternoon, because its visiting hours are short and it is closed on Fridays.
Begin at the building that sums up French Algiers. The Grande Poste d'Alger went up in 1910, designed by Jules Voinot and Marius Toudoire in the neo-Moorish style, as if a mosque had been asked to run a post office. It's the largest post office in Algeria, and the Grande-Poste metro station is beneath it.
Walk in during opening hours to see the interior, then look around you: the white Haussmann-style blocks of the center are what the French built after they knocked down much of the old town. The neo-Moorish style was a French fashion of the early 1900s that also produced the Thaâlibiyya medersa of 1904, and this is its best-known building.
From the Grande Poste, walk up through Place Maurice Audin and onto Rue Didouche Mourad, the main boulevard of the French town, which the French called rue Michelet. It now carries the name of Mourad Didouche, a young revolutionary from El Mouradia who helped launch the independence war and was killed in 1955, aged 27. The street climbs steadily toward the Bardo museum and is the best place in the city to watch Algiers go about its day.
Look at the buildings above the shop fronts, the Haussmann-style blocks the French introduced after 1830. Then stop at a pastry shop for a coffee.
Near the top of the street stands the Sacré-Coeur, and it is not what you expect of a cathedral. It was built from 1956 to a design by Paul Herbé and Jean Le Couteur with the engineer René Sarger: a concrete tent, with a slender dome 35 m above the nave on eight piers. After independence it took over from St Philippe, the old Ketchaoua cathedral from yesterday, as the cathedral of Algiers.
Major restoration work began in December 2025, so the interior may be closed or hidden by scaffolding. If it's open, look for the mosaic near the entrance that dates from 324. If not, the outside is still a good piece of 1950s concrete engineering.
The Bardo museum of prehistory and ethnography is in a Moorish villa built in the late 1700s by Hadj Mustapha ben Omar, a wealthy exile from Tunis, and has been a museum since the late 1920s. The prehistory rooms show Paleolithic and Neolithic tools, pottery and idols, and the ethnography wing covers urban Algeria, the Sahara and the Hoggar.
If you still have energy, the National Museum of Antiquities and Islamic Arts is in the Parc de la Liberté, a short taxi ride away. It opened in 1897 and is the oldest museum in Algeria, with classical antiquities from digs across the country and Islamic art.
Rechta is the dish of the capital: fine handmade noodles of durum semolina in a pale sauce with meat and vegetables, delicately scented with cinnamon, and mostly eaten at feasts. It is the Algiers answer to couscous, and unlike most Algerian pasta dishes it comes in a white sauce instead of a red one.
Restaurants in the center serve it, but a home-style place is better than a smart one: ask a guide or your hotel where their relatives eat. If rechta isn't on the menu, try karantita, a baked chickpea flan eaten with bread, which is also vegetarian.
Take a taxi north to Bologhine, where Notre-Dame d'Afrique stands on a cliff 124 m above the sea. It was inaugurated in 1872 after fourteen years of work, in a Neo-Byzantine style, and the apse carries one of the most surprising inscriptions in a Catholic church: Notre-Dame d'Afrique, priez pour nous et pour les Musulmans ("Our Lady of Africa, pray for us and for the Muslims").
The 46 stained-glass windows were blown out in a bombing in April 1943, and the 2003 Boumerdès earthquake damaged the basilica again. A restoration costing 5.1 million EUR started in 2007 and took three years. The cable car up from Bologhine is out of service, so take the road, then walk to the edge for the view of the bay.
Back downtown, supper can be light. Chorba is a thick tomato soup with lamb, vermicelli and fresh herbs, the traditional way to break the fast in Ramadan. Bourek is a crisp pastry roll filled with spiced meat, egg and onion and fried until golden. Family restaurants and snack counters around Grande Poste and Rue Didouche Mourad are the places to look.
This is the Algiers of independence: the botanical garden the French made, the museum of art next to it, and the great concrete memorial on the hill above. Do the museum and the garden first, and keep the memorial and the dinner for the end of the day, when the light is better. Check the cable car by asking at the garden: it is closed for maintenance from time to time.
The Algiers metro opened on 1 November 2011 after decades of building, and today it is one line with 19 stations from Place des Martyrs to the eastern suburbs. A single ticket costs 50 DZD whatever the distance. It is the quickest way across the center, and Grande Poste and Jardin d'Essai are both stations on it.
Buy your ticket from a window rather than the machine, which only takes coins and is often out of order. In summer 2026 the service ran until 23:00 on Sunday to Thursday and midnight on Friday and Saturday, but winter hours may be shorter, and during Ramadan the service is cut back.
The fine arts museum, on Place Dar Essalem, is one of the largest in Africa, with more than 8,000 works: paintings, drawings, engravings, sculpture, furniture, ceramics, glass and coins. There are Dutch and French masters, but the part to give time to is the Algerian work, by painters such as Baya, Yellès and Racim.
It sits right beside the garden, so there's no need for a taxi. A listing gives Monday to Wednesday hours of 9:00-18:00, Thursday until 17:00, and closed on Sunday, which is why this visit is on a Monday.
The Jardin d'Essai is a 32-hectare garden at the foot of the Arcades hill, founded in 1832 on drained marshland, first as a model farm and test garden and then as a place to acclimatize plants. In 1867 it held an estimated 8,214 species. It closed from 2004 to 2009 for restoration, and about 1,200 species remain. Come for the shade and the old trees, not for a checklist. The garden also holds a zoo, with big cats and bears, which is the part that divides opinion, so decide beforehand whether you want it. Third-party listings show it open seven days a week, at about 10:00 to 17:00 or 18:00, but there is no official schedule, so confirm the closing time.
For lunch, find a sandwich counter and order merguez: a spicy lamb sausage seasoned with harissa, cumin and fennel, grilled and served in bread. It's a cheap lunch and the quickest way to refuel before the climb.
Pick the counter with a line of customers at midday. A Hamoud Boualem soda, the best-known local brand, is the usual drink with it.
The Maqam Echahid ("Martyrs' Memorial") is the symbol of independent Algeria: three concrete palm leaves, about 96 m high, that join halfway up and shelter an eternal flame. A soldier statue stands at the edge of each leaf, one for each stage of the struggle for independence. The Canadian company Lavalin built it, and it opened on 5 July 1982, the 20th anniversary of independence. Since 2017 floodlights make it visible from 35 km away.
The best way up is the cable car from the Jardin d'Essai. Underneath the monument is the National Museum of the Moudjahid, about the independence war. Its opening days are not clearly published (the museum's site shows Sunday 9:00-17:00 and other days are not listed), so ask your hotel to check.
Walk the short distance to Riadh El Feth, the cultural and shopping complex built into the hill in 1982-85 and inaugurated by President Chadli for the first Independence and Youth Festival. It has five levels of shops and cultural spaces, including a children's theater and an audiovisual center. Then go up into the Bois des Arcades, the woodland on the hill about 500 m southeast of the memorial, a shaded place for a walk with some of the best views over the bay.
Look for a restaurant with a terrace and a view over the city and the coast around the Bois des Arcades; no one place could be confirmed open this year, so ask your hotel for a current pick. It is the right way to end a day of independence and concrete. Order grilled meat or a tagine and a mint tea, and watch the lights come on along the bay.
This is the long day, about 200 km round trip, so leave by 7:30 and hire a driver for the day: the three sites are far apart and public transport between them is awkward. Tipaza is roughly 60-70 km and an hour from Algiers, and Cherchell is about 100 km and 1.5 hours. Mid-November sunset is around 5:30pm, so start the drive home by 3:30pm.
The first stop is on a hill above the road at Sidi Rached, and you see it from a distance: the Royal Mausoleum of Mauretania, a huge stone drum topped with a cone, usually dated to around 3 BC and linked to Juba II and his wife Cleopatra Selene, the daughter of Cleopatra VII of Egypt and Mark Antony. The base is about 61 m across, the monument is about 32 m high, and 60 Ionic columns ring it.
The French name, Tombeau de la Chrétienne ("tomb of the Christian woman"), comes from the cross-like lines on the false doors and from the Arabic Kbor er-Roumia, where rumi can mean Roman or Christian. No royal remains have been found inside, and the original entrance, found in 1865, is now sealed, so plan for the outside and the view.
Tipaza was a Punic trading post, then a military colony under the emperor Claudius, and later one of the main Christian towns of Roman Africa: its oldest Christian epitaph dates from 237 or 238 AD. The ruins climb three small hills above the sea, and UNESCO listed them in 1982. The Great Basilica and the Basilica of Alexander stand on the western hill, and the Basilica of St Salsa on the eastern one, the biggest of their kind in modern Algeria. Legend says Salsa, a Christian girl, threw the head of the town's serpent idol into the sea and was stoned for it.
Look for the baths, the theater, the amphitheater and the nymphaeum, and trace the line of the 2.3 km city wall. The Vandals took the town around 429, the Byzantines rebuilt it about 530, and by the end of the seventh century the Arabs left it in ruins and called it Tefassed, "badly damaged".
Near the water, inside the ruins and facing Mount Chenoua, stands a stele put up in 1961 for Albert Camus. It carries a line from his essay Noces à Tipasa ("Nuptials at Tipasa"): Je comprends ici ce qu'on appelle gloire : le droit d'aimer sans mesure ("I understand here what is called glory: the right to love beyond measure"). Camus grew up in Algeria and published Noces in 1938.
Don't hurry here. Sit with the sea in front of you, the mountain behind and the ruins around you, and read the line again.
Tipaza's fishing harbor is a few minutes' walk from the ruins, and several fish restaurants stand near it. Order whatever came off the boats that morning, grilled, and choose a place with customers inside. It is the one lunch of the trip where you eat by the sea, so take your time.
Drive on west to Cherchell, the old capital of the kingdom of Mauretania. It began as the Punic town of Iol around 600 BC, and in 25 BC Augustus gave it to Juba II, who made it his capital and renamed it Caesarea in honor of his patron. Juba and Cleopatra rebuilt it on a lavish scale, and under Rome it grew to more than 20,000 people.
The museum, on Place des Martyrs on the site of the old Roman forum, holds some of the best Roman and Greek sculpture in Africa, including marble statues of Neptune and Venus. Visit it first, then look for the Roman theater and the Western Baths among the modern houses, where a local guide helps.
Today is the modern city, east of the center along the bay. Go to the mosque first, because the minaret lift and the visiting hours are limited. Algiers traffic is heavy, so allow plenty of time for each taxi ride, and keep Wednesday evening free for the view.
The Great Mosque of Algiers, Djamaa El Djazair, is the third-largest mosque in the world after Mecca and Medina, and it was a project of the former president Abdelaziz Bouteflika. A German consortium, KSP Jürgen Engel and Krebs und Kiefer, won the competition in 2008. The complex sits on 27.75 hectares on the bay, can hold up to 120,000 worshippers and has a prayer hall under a 50 m dome. It partly opened in 2019 and was officially inaugurated on 25 February 2024. The official cost was $898 million, and the scale and the bill were widely criticized.
Most of the prayer hall is closed to non-Muslims. A 2026 guide says non-Muslims can see the esplanade, some interior spaces and the cultural areas (museum, library). A strict dress code applies: arms and ankles covered for everyone, hair covered for women, knees covered for men.
The minaret is 265 m tall, with 37 floors, and it is the tallest in the world. It has two panoramic elevators, a museum of Islamic art and history on 15 levels, a research center and an observation deck at the top with a view of the bay. The tower stands on clay and marshy ground, and doubts about how it would stand up to an earthquake were raised from the start.
Access is the open question: a 2026 guide describes a guided visit that included climbing the minaret, while an older English guidebook says it is closed to non-Muslims. Ask at the entrance, or book a guided visit, and expect it to close at short notice.
Chakhchoukha is a dish of the east, from around Biskra, and not a native of Algiers, so ask for it on purpose. Torn flatbread is soaked in a spicy tomato and chickpea stew. Look for a restaurant that serves food from the east, and ask your hotel or guide to point you to one.
The promenade and park at Sablettes are a popular family outing. Take a taxi from the mosque, walk along the sea, and sit on a bench with a coffee. There is a beach here too, though November is not beach weather.
It isn't a sight, which is the point: after the Casbah and the memorials, an hour of ordinary Algiers by the water.
For the last evening, go up to the El Aurassi hotel on Boulevard Frantz Fanon, in the Tagarins district on the hill west of the center. Its Seventy-Five Lounge serves drinks, with or without alcohol, with a view over the city and the bay.
Order tea or a glass of wine, and watch the lights come on over the white city you walked through. The view is the reason to come.
Finish with mechoui: a whole lamb or large cuts of it slow-roasted over coals until the meat falls off the bone, the centerpiece of Algerian celebrations. It is not an everyday restaurant dish, so order it in advance if you can, and share it.
Mechoui goes with bread, salad and mint tea, and with a table of people. Ask your hotel where to book one for the group.
Everything below is within about 100 km of the center, ordered by distance.
Sidi Fredj, once Sidi Ferruch, is the point where the French fleet landed on 14 June 1830, which began the conquest of Algeria. It sits on a small peninsula by the sea.
Getting there: Around 20 km west of the center, 45 minutes by taxi
Blida is the city of roses, set at the foot of the Tell Atlas. Behind it rises Chréa National Park, founded in 1997, with Atlas cedar forests, Barbary macaques and one of the few ski stations in Africa that works on natural snow.
Getting there: About 45 km south-west, 1 hour by taxi or train and shared taxi
Médéa sits in the hills on the site of a Roman military post, and the slopes around it are covered with vineyards and orchards. It is one of the wine areas of Algeria.
Getting there: About 68 km south, 1.5 hours by road
Dellys is a small harbor town with an Ottoman-era Casbah, two colonial lighthouses on Cape Bengut and a few beaches. Fishing and farming are the main business.
Getting there: About 100 km east on the coast, 2 hours by road
Tizi Ouzou is the capital of Kabylie, the mountainous Berber heartland east of Algiers, with olive groves, villages and the snow-capped Djurdjura range behind. Check your government's travel advice first, because parts of the northern mountains are on some warning lists, and go with a local guide or an agency.
Getting there: About 100 km east, 2-2.5 hours by road
Bordj Tamentfoust is one of the forts built around the bay in the 16th and 17th centuries to defend Algiers, on the peninsula that forms its eastern side. It's a short trip for sea views and for a sense of how the city was defended.
Getting there: About 25 km east of the center on the far side of the bay, around an hour by taxi with traffic
Algerian food mixes Berber, Arab, Ottoman and French habits. Meat, semolina and fresh herbs are the base, and the capital has a few dishes of its own.
Algeria's national dish: steamed semolina grains under a stew of lamb or chicken, vegetables and chickpeas. It is a Friday family ritual, and it can be served in many ways, from a dry version with raisins to a rich one with meat and zucchini.
Where to try it: A family restaurant or couscous bar in the Casbah and the lower town. A guide can recommend one that is open.
The dish of Algiers: fine handmade noodles of durum semolina in a white sauce with meat and vegetables, delicately scented with cinnamon. It is mostly a feast dish, and a rare example of a pale Algerian stew.
Where to try it: Home-style restaurants in the center. Ask a guide or your hotel which one has it that day.
A thick tomato-based soup with lamb, vermicelli and fresh herbs, or with frik. It is the traditional way to break the Ramadan fast and a meal in winter.
Where to try it: Snack counters and family restaurants downtown, in the cold months.
Torn flatbread soaked in a spicy tomato and chickpea stew, a specialty of the eastern regions around Biskra. It isn't a dish of Algiers, so ask for it on purpose.
Where to try it: Restaurants that serve food from the east and south. Ask for it as the dish of the day.
Whole lamb slow-roasted over coals until the meat falls off the bone, the centerpiece of celebrations and feasts. Order ahead if you can.
Where to try it: A grill house that does mechoui by the kilo, usually on weekends. Your hotel can book it.
Crispy pastry rolls filled with spiced meat, egg and onion and fried until golden. An essential starter at Ramadan and a good snack all year.
Where to try it: Snack counters and family restaurants. It is best eaten hot, straight from the pan.
A semolina pastry stuffed with date paste and soaked in honey, the best-loved traditional sweet in the country. The almond version, kalb el louz, is a semolina cake with an almond center, soaked in syrup.
Where to try it: Pastry shops around Place des Martyrs and downtown. Buy a few and eat them with tea.
Spicy lamb sausages seasoned with harissa, cumin and fennel, grilled and served in bread or beside couscous. A cheap, quick lunch.
Where to try it: Sandwich counters and grills. Pick the one with a line of customers.
Strong green tea with fresh mint and generous sugar, served in small glasses as a sign of hospitality. It comes with pastries in the afternoon and at every ceremony.
Where to try it: Pastry shops and cafés, or in someone's home if you're invited.
A baked chickpea flan, eaten with bread. It is vegetarian and one of the simplest things you can eat in the country.
Where to try it: Snack counters and small restaurants downtown. Ask for it by name.
Algerians drink a lot of coffee: thick espresso or black coffee, and a milky café au lait with a croissant is the standard breakfast. Other breakfast options include msemen (layered flatbread) and baghrir (a spongy pancake) with honey or jam. Mazagran, a cold sweetened coffee, is said to have been born here.
Where to try it: Any café or pastry shop downtown, standing at the counter or sitting outside.
There is no national spirit here. The local drink is Hamoud Boualem, the best-known Algerian soda brand, and mint tea. Alcohol isn't banned, but it is frowned upon: wine, mostly from the slopes around Mascara, Médéa and Tlemcen, and local beer are sold in hotels, good restaurants and some shops. It isn't served everywhere.
Where to try it: Hotel bars and bigger restaurants. Ask before you assume a place serves alcohol.
Pick a district for the first thing you want to see in the morning. Taxis are cheap and the metro is one line, so being close to it matters.
Best for: First-timers: the metro, cafés and most hotels are here
The French-era center has the Grande Poste metro station and the boulevards. The catch is steep streets and heavy traffic.
Best for: Travelers who want to be next to the Casbah
You are at the start of day one and next to the metro terminus. The catch is that the Casbah's alleys aren't a place to wander at night, and the choice of places to stay is thin.
Best for: Day three: the garden, the museum and the memorial
A residential district with a metro station at the Jardin d'Essai and the cable car to the memorial. The catch is distance: it is several kilometers from the Casbah, so you will need taxis.
Best for: Early flights or a late arrival
Only worth it for a short layover. The airport is 17-20 km east of the center, and there is no metro link.
Pinpoint: click each country on the world map - inside the border for full points, the closer the more you earn.
The practical stuff that makes the first day in Algiers easier.
Almost everyone needs a visa. Apply through the Algerian consulate in your country well before you travel; fees and processing times depend on your nationality and consulate, so ask early. Your passport must be valid for at least six months after arrival. A visa on arrival is possible only if most of your travel is in the south, with a confirmed booking with an approved local agency. Check your consulate's current rules.
Only residents may bring dinars (DZD) in or out of the country, up to 10,000, so you buy them on arrival. The official rate used in this guide is 152 DZD per euro (Bank of Algeria, 6 Nov 2026), while the unofficial street market in Algiers was quoting around 275 DZD per euro the next day. That gap is large, but street exchange is unofficial and risky. Change at a bank or a licensed office, keep your receipts, and declare cash above 5,000 EUR on entry and exit. Bring euros in cash: cards work at some ATMs and big hotels, but not widely.
The UK Foreign Office advises against all travel to parts of Algeria, among them the southern border areas, the borders with Libya and Tunisia, the Sahara and some rural and mountain areas in the north, and it doesn't single out Algiers. It advises using a good local guide in the Casbah, avoiding unfamiliar suburbs after dark and carrying little cash. Pickpockets work the Casbah and crowded transport. Drones, binoculars and some camera equipment need authorization to import.
The metro is one line with a flat fare of 50 DZD. Taxis are plentiful: check that the meter is running or agree the price first, and ask your hotel to call one at night. The local app Yassir works in Algiers, and travel guides say it needs an Algerian phone number, so pick up a SIM first. City buses cost around 20 DZD, but they are hard to use without Arabic.
Friday is the main day of prayer, and many places close or open late. Notre-Dame d'Afrique is listed as closed to visitors on Fridays, and some museums and gardens may be too, so keep Friday for travel or a slow day. In Ramadan, restaurants open after sunset and public transport runs shorter hours. Algeria is on UTC+1 all year, with no clock change.
Dress modestly: cover your shoulders and knees, and for mosques cover arms, ankles and (for women) hair. Ask before photographing people, and be careful around police, soldiers and government buildings. Alcohol is sold in hotels and some restaurants, but it's frowned upon in public.
Arabic and Tamazight (Berber) are the national languages. French is widely used on signs and in shops, and English is limited outside hotels, so a few words of French or Arabic help. Shukran means thank you, and salam alaykum is the greeting.
Mobilis, Djezzy and Ooredoo sell SIM cards at the airport, but you need your passport for the registration and there is often a queue. An eSIM bought before you leave avoids that. Algeria uses plug types C and F (the usual European two-pin plug) at 230 V.
Yes. Three days cover the Casbah, downtown and the memorial, and the other two give you a day trip to Tipaza and Cherchell and a slow day at the Great Mosque and the seafront. With more time, Blida, Chréa and Kabylie are the best additions.
The Casbah with a guide, Ketchaoua Mosque and Dar Mustapha Pacha, the Grande Poste and Rue Didouche Mourad, Notre-Dame d'Afrique, the Maqam Echahid and the Jardin d'Essai, the Bardo museum and the Great Mosque with its minaret. This plan covers all of them.
Tipaza, about an hour west, where Roman and Christian ruins climb a hill above the sea. Combine it with the Royal Mausoleum of Mauretania on the way and Cherchell further on, as in day four.
Central Algiers has a heavy police presence and is generally calm during the day. Governments advise against travel to border areas and parts of the south, and ask visitors to use a local guide in the Casbah, avoid unfamiliar suburbs after dark and watch for pickpockets. Check your own government's advice before you go.
Tickets and local food are cheap by European standards: a metro ride is 50 DZD, a museum a few hundred dinars. The costs are guides, taxis, hotels and the day trip. The big variable is the exchange rate: the street rate is far higher than the official one, so what you pay depends on how you change money.
Almost certainly. Apply at an Algerian consulate before you travel, and allow a few weeks. Rules differ by nationality, and an arrival visa is possible only for organized trips to the south, so check your consulate.
Only in a few places. Some ATMs accept Visa and Mastercard, and big hotels may take cards, but most shops, restaurants and museums want cash. Bring euros to exchange at a bank, and keep the receipts.
Not widely. Arabic and French are the working languages, and English is mostly limited to hotels, guides and younger people. Learn a few words of French, and use a guide for the Casbah.
Find Algiers on the map, learn the flag and check how much you really know about Algeria.
Rock art from a greener Sahara, Tuareg guides, red dunes and a visa that only works through an agency. Five days in Algeria's far south.
A Spanish fort on the mountain, French boulevards, the birthplace of raï and a day trip to Tlemcen. Planned day by day.
Five fortified Saharan towns, one palm-grove water system and a few strict house rules. Planned day by day.
Algeria