Algiers
Horatio Clare The Guardian , Saturday 4 September 2010 Visitors can help bring Algiers out of the shadows. Photograph: Patrick Robert/Sygma/Corbia Isn't is strange that a gigantic country with some of the most beautiful coastline on Earth, a luminous hinterland of mountains vast and deserts idle, crowned with the most alluring capital city I know, should be just three hours from London and almost unvisited by travellers? We used to go: well-to-do Victorians loved wintering in Algeria . But modernity has been cruel to this great gorgeous land, and even by the standards of war-torn Africa , Algeria's is an awful story. We associate it with the violent end of French colonialism, civil war in the 90s that cost up to 200,000 lives, and sporadic terror attacks. But this is a gross underestimation of a magical place, and a delightful and beguiling people. With its Phoenician, Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman, Barbary pirate and French colonial heritage, Algeria ...
