To the S. of the Place de la République are the new quarters of the town. At the beginning of the Rue de Constantine (Pl. C, 3, 4), on the left, is the new Palais de Justice (Pl. 20; C, 3), in the pseudo-classical style. On the right is the new-Romanesque church of St. Augustin (Pl. 9; C, 3).
At the back of this church runs the Rue Dumont-d’Urville (Pl. C, 3), passing almost immediately on the left the Rue de Tanger, in which rises the small Mosque of the Mozabites (p. [216]), and leading to the long and monotonous Rue d’Isly (Pl. C, 4). The latter crosses the Place d’Isly. (Pl. C, 4), where a monument has been erected to Marshal Bugeaud (1784–1849), the conqueror of Abd el-Kâder (p. [221]).
Farther on in the Rue de Constantine, on the left, at No. 32 is the Musée Municipal des Beaux-Arts (adm., see p. [220]), containing a small collection of pictures mostly by French painters.
The Rue de Constantine and Rue d’Isly reach the boundary of the old town at the new Post Office (Pl. 22, C, 4; p. [219]), a neo-Moorish building (1910), on the N. side of the Boulevard Laferrière (Pl. C, 4, 5; p. [222]), or Boul. Militaire Sud. To the right, above, are the handsome offices of the Dépêche Algérienne (p. [220]), in the neo-Moorish style. The open space on the left, down by the sea, is destined for the future Central Station.
From Boul. Laferrière to Mustapha-Supérieur, see pp. [231], 230; to Belcourt and Le Hamma, see p. [232].
b. The Kasba.
To avoid the steep ascents in the Kasba Quarter we take the tramway (No. 6, p. [219]) to the Prison Civile, glance at the Mohammedan Cemetery and the Kasba Barracks, and then descend from the Boul. de la Victoire by one or other of the streets (very slippery in wet weather) between the Rue de la Kasba (Pl. C, 2) and Boul. Gambetta (Pl. B, C, 3). It should be noted that all the ascending streets lead to the Boulevard de la Victoire, and the descending streets to Rue Randon or Rue Marengo. Ladies in particular may sometimes gain admission to one of the better Moorish houses (comp. p. xxvi), where they should not omit to see the view from the roof. A walk through the Kasba quarter by moonlight is delightful, but safe only for a considerable party.
The *Kasba Quarter (Pl. B, C, 2, 3), the almost unaltered main portion of old Algiers, bounded by the Rue Randon, Rue Marengo, and Boul. de la Victoire, lies on the hill-side below the Kasba, the old castle and afterwards the residence of the Turkish rulers, and still presents a highly attractive picture of Oriental life, though partly inhabited by Maltese and Spaniards as well as by Mohammedans of various races and creeds (p. [171]). A few streets only, with small mosques, coffee-houses, and shops, show signs of life in the daytime, and that chiefly on Fridays and Sundays. Most of the streets, however, often only 6–7 ft. wide, with their jutting upper stories and balconies supported by brackets of beams, and the numerous blind alleys and sombre vaulted passages are shrouded in silence, while their bare, almost windowless walls and their closed doors, marked with the sign of the warning hand (p. [81]), enhance their impenetrable mystery.
The chief business street of the Kasba is the Rue Randon (Pl. C, 2, 3; comp. p. [226]), especially the S. part of it with its shops, between the Marché de la Lyre (p. [226]) and the Synagogue (Pl. 24, C 2; adm., see p. [220]), a building with a huge dome and three women’s galleries.
The Rue de la Girafe and Rue Caton, the last two side-streets before the Synagogue, ascend to the Rue Kléber (Pl. C, 2), where, at the crossing of the Rue d’Anfreville and Rue du Palmier, opposite an Arabian coffee-house, rises the small Mosque of Sidi Mohammed ech-Chériff (Pl. 17; C, 2).