The safeguard of the monuments and the sites was always regarded as an absolute priority for the conservation of the archaeological inheritance of Algeria. The monuments and sites disseminate through the territory constitute the testimony of many civilizations of which those several thousand-year-old times which mark the prehistoric period. Going back to several thousands of years engravings and cave paintings of Tassili richness and originality of the civilization attest which is developed in Hoggar with the center of the current vastness of the Sahara.
Seven monuments and sites in Algeria are registered with the world inheritance of UNESCO.
- Tassili Ajjer:
A strange lunar landscape of large interests geological shelters one of the most significant sets of rupestral prehistoric arts of the world. More than 15 000 drawings and engravings have allowed to follow there for 6000 years BC until the first centuries of our era, changes of the climate, migrations of the fauna and the evolution of the human life to the borders of the Sahara. The geological formations, with the niches that erosion dug in the liking, are of a spectacular beauty.
To 2000 km of Algiers in the extraordinary landscapes of Tassili of vast Ajjer sandy plate with lunar aspect and of an imposing beauty, one can see there gigantic canyons, boxed throats, stone drills, cupolas in likings cut out by erosion.
At the north of Hoggar, is located one of the richest prehistoric museums of art existing at the world. On hundreds of Km, splendid cave paintings with the number of several thousands contribute a very new share to the universal history of arts and the knowledge of the prehistoric ages of Africa.
- Djemila:
Djemila, or Cuicul, with its forums, its temples and its basilicas, its triumphal arches and its houses to 900 m of altitude, provides a remarkable example of the adaptation of the diagrams of Roman town planning to a site of mountain.
- Valley of M’ Zab:
The valley preserved intact, around its five Ksours or villages strengthen, a traditional human habitat created in the 10th century by Ibadites. Functional calculus and stripped perfectly adapted to the medium, conceived for the joint life, but respecting the family structures, the architecture of M’ Zab is a source of inspiration for the town planners of today.
- Kasbah of Algiers:
In one of the most beautiful maritime sites of the Mediterranean Sea, overhanging the Small islands where a Carthaginian counter was installed in the fifth century BC, the Kasbah is an Islamic city, or Médina, of an original type. Place of memory as much as place of history, it includes, in addition to the citadel, of the old mosques, the palaces of Ottoman style and a traditional urban fabric where a very thorough sociability has long date left its mark.
- Kalaâ of Beni Hammad:
In a mountainous site of one seizing beauty, the ruins of the first capital of the emirs Hamadites, founded in 1007 and dismantled in 1152, restore us the image of a strengthened Moslem city. Its mosque, with its room of prayer of 13 naves, is one of largest of Algeria.
- Timgad:
On the northern mountside of Aurès, Timgad was created in 100 AD, by Emperor Trajan as a military colony. With its square enclosure and its orthogonal plan orders by the cardo and the decumnus, the two perpendicular ways which crossed the city, it is an example of the town planning of ancient Rome to its apogee.
- Tipasa:
On banks of the Mediterranean Sea, Tipasa, old Punic counter, was occupied by Rome, which made of it a strategic base for the conquest of the kingdoms of Mauritanians. The site understands a single whole of the phenician, Roman, paléochristian and byzantin vestiges, being neighbourly with the aboriginal monuments, such the "Kbor ez Roumia", large mausoleum royal Mauritanian says "Tomb of the Christian Woman".
Resurgence of traditional popular arts :
The popular creative genius, is expressed with glare through the weaving, the ceramics, the pottery, the jewellery, the sculpture on wood, basket making, etc....
Traditional art goes up with more than fifty centuries and fact integral part of the life of yesteryear and always. It remains the long-lived work of the women and the men of the plains and the mountains, Hoggar at the villages of Kabylie or Aurès.
In fact, this expression of the popular heart includes all the material and immaterial productions of Algeria, that it is the culinary carpet, song, proverb, receipts or the customs and habits. The immaterial inheritance, whose importance holds the attention of UNESCO, worried since decades the Algerian persons in charge and specialists.
The national museums exceptionally constitute an invaluable referens with this varied cultural inheritance and evocative there remains a major tourist asset for Algeria, as the foreigners, and a source of income hardly started.
a) The Algerian craft industry:
Pottery with ceramics while passing by weaving, popular arts Algerian always took as a starting point their close local environment. But they were always opened to universality thanks to the proximity of the heart of Africa, the East and Europe. It is thus a vast coloured creation, flickering and changing, reflection of the accurately transmitted magic from generation to generation.
b) carpet and weavings:
Town and rural weavings go from the multicoloured carpets, characteristic of the various areas, and with the finely decorated wool blankets.
Except the relatively recent carpets of Tlemcen and M' Zab, town works of art, the four large Algerian characteristic carpets are the carpets of the kalaâ, Guergour, the djebel Amour and Nememchas.
In the manner of other artistic objects such as the potteries, the rural carpet (that of the nomads) is designed for a daily use. The space of the tent, is reduced to a floor few meters cross-sections. The nomad covers this surface to protect itself from the cold, and the discomfort of the ground. For the nomad, tents and carpets are indissociable.
c) Dinandery:
The kasbahs still shelter skilful braziers working the copper sheet engraving the muds, the plates or the ewers.
d) Costumes:
Reflections of arts and the popular traditions, the costume and the way of getting dressed characterize the various cultures which flowered on the own territory.
Algerian knew to put at the style of the day the secular costumes such as Kaftan, Karak or and Gandoura according to various styles of Tlemcen, Algiers, Annaba and Constantine. The traditional oufits of Kabylie, Aurès, the Algerian South, the area of Sétif, like Oranie, know a renewed interest among rising generation and stir up that of the increasingly many tourists who visit deep Algeria.
The man still appreciates Bdija (waistcoat) and sometimes even the named cap "Chachiya-Stamboul" intended to protect from the cold and to affirm the personality of the man. The Burnous is with more majestic, warm and resistant one. The two sides are connected by it to the level of the chest, by a decorative passementerie whose technique is transmitted of craftsman to craftsman.
e) Leather working:
Leather constitutes a significant matter of the town craft industry or south of the country. Famous Belgha (Turkish slippers) continue to have success.
In the south of Algeria, as one can see it on some weapons, leather was used formerly for the decoration of the shields.
Leather also intervened in the manufacture of certain clothing such as the tunic in tanned skin. The saddles of Méhari are always partly manufactured with leather, as well as the bags of voyages of Touaregs richly decorated (multicoloured checkerworks, rhombuses, triangles) and pretty the wallets in thin skin and several compartments. The colors sharp of the drawings carried out on the tarablats evoke the reasons decorating the carpet of Me Zab.
f) Ceramic:
Conceived with fine utilities in the everyday life ceramics is an old art. All the areas of Algeria are represented: potteries of M' Zab, Djurdjura, Aurès, Djidelli, Nedromah, the high plateaus or Chenoua.
One distinguishes the potteries being used as food containers with religious magico use, or the decorative potteries. But one can order them according to their form. Thus the "ikufan" intend to receive figs or the cereals for the winter, are large potteries oval, cylindrical or cubic, the earthenware jars have sometimes the pause in developed bulge and a short collar. The couscouss vases constitute with the "ikufan" and the various categories of earthenware jars, the vertical series of the potteries.
The "horizontal" series includes especially the dishes of size and variable aspects.
The large dish used to roll the couscous, the tadjin to cook wafer, the dish of couscous (methred), the small plates, the double dishes or triple, the saucers, etc....
Clay, raw material used, are extracted from the known careers with open sky known as the potters of the village or camping. The loam is kneaded. With success gains by this art near the tourists, it micro ceramics decorated and cooked with fire rich and is varied. The decoration is geometrical: rhombuses, half circles, broken lines, points learnedly dispersed on external surface, as with other decorative reasons cover these potteries: flowers, animals, objects, hands, crescents, stars…
g) Jewels:
One finds a quantity significant of jewels coming from all the corners of the country, in particular of Hoggar, Constantinois North, Aurès and Kabylie.
The Auresian jewel is assembled with a metal (silver) forged and engraved. It is also characterized by its smoothness: bead of small glassware, silver chains. Auresian Bracelets and fibules are not matched with corals and enamels.
The Kabul jewels are more colourfull. Red coral, cloves chestnut, white money and enamels green, blue, red give to the invaluable objects flickering tones. Earrings, diadems, collars fibules of several sizes, chains, bracelets, belts, rings, limp with jewels as dowleries are famous.
h) Wood carves:
In septentrional Algeria, the craftsmen work wood.
Among the parts intended to be fixed, the doors and the racks of dishes with the multicoloured floral decoration are particularly appreciated. The handles of knives, sleeves of swords, the various ustensils traditional (spoons, dishes, equivocal…) and the small coffee tables (maïda) are also covered with themes. But the head of work by excellency of furniture remains the high Berber trunk on feet, length and carve on three or four faces and the traditional trunk of the bride lower and smaller.
The first includes a serious geometrical intention. Carved with same wood, the figures are also obtained using reported rods. Rosettes, stars of the blind arcades, rhombuses, are repeated on the old traditional trunks whose art always proceeds by low relief. Sorted wood of walnut tree or extremely resistant ash, these trunks are sometimes tinted and waxed.
The traditional trunk always had a family if not social function.
