Gateway to Timgad — the Pompeii of North Africa and the Aurès Berber mountain heartland
Batna is a city of 400,000 in the Aurès Mountains of northeastern Algeria, serving as the administrative and commercial centre for Algeria's most rugged highland region and the gateway to Timgad — a remarkably well-preserved Roman colonial city 35km to the east, often called the Pompeii of North Africa and a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1982. Timgad was founded by Emperor Trajan in 100 AD as a perfect Roman grid city for veteran legionaries, and its orthogonal street plan, triumphal arch, theatre, and forum are among the most complete in the Roman world outside Italy. The Aurès massif its…
The Aurès region was the last territory in North Africa to resist Romanisation — the Berber Aures tribes held out against Roman control for over a century and later famously resisted the Arab conquest of the Maghreb in the 7th century under the Berber warrior queen Dihya (Kahina). Batna itself was established as a French military base in 1844 during the conquest of Algeria; the Aurès mountains were a primary base for the Algerian National Liberation Army (ALN) during the independence war (1954–62), and the Aurès insurrection on November 1, 1954 is considered the official start of the Algerian…