DZ · Curated travel guide
Tassili n'Ajjer, Qal'at Bani Hammad, M'zab and 7 more — what each one is, and why it is worth the detour.
Chosen from everything Wikidata knows about Algeria and ranked by how many Wikipedia language editions describe them, which is about as close to "famous" as open data gets. 3 are on UNESCO's World Heritage list.
World Heritage
Sandstone massif in Algeria's central Sahara Desert
A mountain range of the Sahara in south-eastern Algeria, covering more than 72,000 km² (28,000 sq mi) and holding one of the world's most important groups of prehistoric cave art.
Photo: magharebia, CC BY 2.0
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World Heritage
Historic site in Algeria
Also called Qal'a Bani Hammad or Qal'at of the Beni Hammad, a fortified palatine city in Algeria, now ruined, which in the 11th century was the Hammadid dynasty's first capital.
Photo: R hakka, CC BY-SA 4.0
World Heritage
UNESCO World Heritage Site in Ghardaïa Province, Algeria
Also written Mzab, a natural region of the northern Sahara in Algeria's Ghardaïa Province, 600 km (370 mi) south of Algiers, with roughly 360,000 inhabitants.
Photo: Camille Gillet, CC BY-SA 4.0
Highest mountain peak in Algeria
Algeria's highest mountain, reaching 3003 metres.
Photo: Olivier Morice, Public domain
Saharan region of Algeria
Also called the Algerian Desert or the Great South, the part of the Sahara lying in Algeria. It takes up most of the country, about 80% of its land, and is one of the biggest national shares of the Sahara, itself the largest hot desert on Earth.
Photo: Sidsegh, CC BY-SA 4.0
Mosque in Algiers, Algeria
Also called Djamaa Ketchaoua, a mosque in Algiers, Algeria's capital, finished in the 17th century in the Ottoman period. It stands at the foot of the Casbah of Algiers, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, on the first of the many steep stairways climbing the Casbah.
Photo: Rachid Hamatou, CC BY-SA 4.0
Historic mosque in Algiers, Algeria
Also called the Great Mosque of Algiers, a mosque in Algiers, Algeria, built in 1097 and one of the few surviving examples of Almoravid architecture.
Photo: Brahimpic, CC BY-SA 3.0
Grand mosque in Algiers, Algeria
Also called the Great Mosque of Algiers, a large mosque in Mohammadia, Dar El Beïda District, Algiers, Algeria. Opened in April 2019, it has a minaret 265 metres (869 ft) high, the tallest anywhere, and ranks third among the world's mosques by size, behind Al-Masjid an-Nabawi of Medina and the Great Mosque of Mecca, both in Saudi Arabia.
Photo: Askelaadden, CC BY-SA 4.0
Erg in Algeria
In Arabic العرق الغربي الكبير, an erg in the north-central Algerian Sahara, the third-largest in Algeria after the Grand Erg Oriental and the Erg Chech.
Photo: Superazzouz123, CC BY-SA 3.0
Catholic basilica in Algeria
Algiers' Catholic basilica, properly “Basilique Notre Dame d'Afrique”, from which the modern devotion among Catholics to Our Lady of Africa springs.
Photo: toufik Lerari from Nice, France, CC BY-SA 2.0
Officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria, a North African country in the Maghreb. Covering over 2,381,741 square kilometres (919,595 sq mi), it is Africa's biggest country and the world's tenth-biggest. The Mediterranean lies to its north; Tunisia borders it on the northeast, Libya on the east, Niger on the southeast, Western Sahara, Mauritania and Mali on the southwest, and Morocco on the west.
Officially The People's Democratic Republic of Algeria. Known locally as Dzayer.
Based on the Wikipedia article, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0: the facts are Wikipedia's, the wording is this site's.
This guide lists 10: Tassili n'Ajjer, Qal'at Bani Hammad, M'zab and Mount Tahat and others. Tassili n'Ajjer, Qal'at Bani Hammad and M'zab are UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
By machine, from open data, with no human ranking them and nobody able to pay for a place on the list. Everything Wikidata records in Algeria that is a building, a landform, a protected area or a tourist attraction, has coordinates, a photograph and an English Wikipedia article, is ranked by how many Wikipedia language editions wrote about it. Provinces, cities, airports, stations and stretches of sea shared with the neighbours are filtered out.
3 of the 10 in this guide: Tassili n'Ajjer, Qal'at Bani Hammad and M'zab. That is not the full count for Algeria, only the listed sites that made this guide.
Arabic, Berber. The currency is DZD.
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