3-070-715 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Street in the Casba, Algiers, 1881. '...the old Moorish Algiers [is] in the form of a triangle, with its base at the Place Bresson, formerly the Bab-Azzoun; a triangle set in the steep face of a hill...inclosed within a stone wall, having several gates; the space within densely over-built with flat-roofed native houses, all of dazzling white stone, but with mosques, distinguished by minarets and domes, and other Oriental features of building. At the summit of the triangle is the Casbah, the ancient fortress and palace of the Deys of Algiers, who were deposed by the French Conquest fifty years ago. In ascending to the Casbah, through the narrow streets or lanes of the old Moorish town, the blank outer walls of the houses, their overhanging upper stories, and their closed doors, present no very inviting appearance; but the interior courts, with galleries supported by arcades or pillars, often decorated with tiles, or with carved woodwork or plaster mouldings, are frequently handsome and pleasant. The roof of the house usually forms a paved terrace for the inmates to lounge upon in the cool of the evening, to smoke the pipe of contentment and to enjoy the proverbial "Kief," or sensation of complacent repose'. From "Illustrated London News", 1881.