Gallery

The Casbah, photographed

Forty-seven photographs, engravings, plans and paintings of the medina of Algiers, arranged by subject. Click any image to see it at full size.

The streets of the Casbah are almost impossible to photograph well. They are narrow, steep, and in shade for most of the day, and the things worth seeing are behind doors. What follows is what the record holds: the stairs, the courtyards that the streets never show you, the tilework, the walls on the heights, the bay, and the older material that survives only on paper.

A vaulted passage running beneath a house, lit by a single lantern.The blank outward face of a Casbah house. The street is shown a wall and a door, nothing more.A stepped street in the upper town, plants on every ledge, timber galleries overhead.Corbelled upper storeys carried on timber brackets, leaning out over the street.An arched fountain niche set into the wall at the foot of a stair.Upper floors almost meeting overhead, the alley in permanent shade.A studded timber door at the top of a whitewashed stair, the flag above it.A courtyard of arcaded galleries, tiled to head height, planted at the centre.White arcades and blue tilework around an open square of sky.A gallery arcade above a broad band of zellige.Turned timber balustrades to the upper gallery, tiled floor below.Looking up through two storeys of gallery to the opening above.Arches on arches. The courtyard is the only level, private, open ground the hill allows.Columns and a chequered floor, with planting let into the corner.A stone fountain basin in a courtyard, the arcade running behind it.A dark arcaded corridor opening onto the light of a courtyard.A vaulted vestibule with a hanging lantern and an arched doorway beyond.White vaulting and a single suspended lantern.Carved and studded timber joinery, and a screen to filter the light.Painted and gilded ceiling panels above a band of muqarnas.A passage under vaulting, lantern lit, the daylight kept at the far end.Zellige set in eight-point stars, with a screened opening cut through it.A painted timber ceiling worked to its centre rosette.A canopied interior kept as it was, tiled walls behind.A tiled room in use as a gallery, work set out on easels.Coloured glass above a zellige floor, the light falling in patterns.Blue and white tilework to the walls, painted timber above.A whitewashed facade with a fountain urn beneath the palms.A prayer hall of arcades, the carpet running the length of it.The lower city, where the medina meets the grid laid over it.A square in the lower Casbah, a minaret rising behind the rooftops.A palace front on the lower slope, palms along the street.Defensive walls on the heights, vegetation taking the stonework.A ruined stone arcade, its piers still standing.An arcaded upper gallery within the fortress, the minaret beside it.Rampart walls of stone and timber, seen from outside.The white city falling away to the port.The harbour seen through a wrought iron window grille.The whole hillside and the bay in one frame.The lower city after dark.Terraces stepping down the slope towards the water.The city from the sea, in one long plate.A historic photograph of the waterfront and the medina above it.An engraving of the great cannon known as Baba Merzoug.Algiers modelled as it stood in 1830, the medina still complete between citadel and sea.The citadel surveyed in 1830, drawn by the people who had just taken it.A nineteenth century painting of shops in Algiers.

Photographs gathered from public sources and reproduced here as a record of the medina. If you hold the rights to an image on this page and would like it credited differently, or removed, please write to admin@casbah-alger.com and it will be dealt with promptly.

Captions describe what is in each frame. Where a building is not named, it is because the identification could not be confirmed rather than because it does not matter. Corrections are welcome.

Keep reading

Behind the photographs

Tiled arcade in a Casbah house

Architecture

How the walls were built, and what the tilework is doing there.

Read

Algiers modelled as it stood in 1830

History

From a Phoenician anchorage to a World Heritage Site.

Read

Courtyard of an Ottoman palace in Algiers

Dars and palaces

The houses behind the blank street walls.

Read

Casbah of Algiers

An independent record of the medina of Algiers, its architecture, its history and its people. Written and maintained by Samir Sibachir.

The medina

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© 2026 casbah-alger.comImages are reproduced as a record of the medina. Rights queries to admin@casbah-alger.com.