The quiet, luminous pull of Algiers

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What lingers with anyone who spends time in Algiers isn’t just the vast arc of the bay—though that sudden drop of whitewashed stone into the Mediterranean stops you instantly—but the quiet, persistent rhythm of the city. It’s in the long afternoon coffees along Rue Didouche Mourad, and the sheer surprise of stepping through a weathered door in the Casbah to find a cool Ottoman courtyard wrapped in intricate Zellige tiles.

People talk about returning just for the light at dusk, when the hills turn cream and slate, or for the scent of fresh sardines from the port blending with street-corner jasmine. You end up standing at a high bend in an alley, where a gap between centuries-old houses suddenly opens to the open sea below, right as an elderly woman opens a brass-trimmed shutter—