Located on the coast 260 km east of Algiers, 135 km from Tizi Ouzou and 110 km northwest of Sétif, Bejaïa is the capital of Petite Kabylie. The Place Gueydon is the center of the historic city which expanded during the French period around the recently beautifully restored Kasbah. The old city is built along the bay, above the port and up to the heights. It gathers the post office, the APC (the town hall), the theater, the cinematheque and the bank of Algeria... Around this one, the new districts of El-Khmis, Daouadji, El-Qods, Aamriw, or farther Sidi Ahmed and Ihaddaden, where the activity is more intense, have largely developed.History. Protected from the western wind by the Gouraya massif, the site of Bejaia was already known to the Phoenicians who had called it Vaga ("the brambles"), certainly in reference to the type of vegetation that covered the rocky buttresses. The Romans settled in Saldae but it was in the 11th century AD that the city experienced its most important development. At that time, the Beni Hammad left their mountain kalaa in the M'Sila region and moved down to the coast, which was more welcoming and conducive to trade. In 1067, en-Nasser, sovereign of the radiant Hammadite dynasty, gives his name to the city which will become twenty-five years later the political and cultural capital of the kingdom. From then on, En-Nassria was a renowned shipbuilding center and prospered from a city built on a staircase between the mountains and the deep blue sea to a real city that was coveted and then taken in the middle of the 12th century by the Almohads and then by the Hafsids of Tunisia. In the 16th century, the Spaniards, anxious to secure control of the western Mediterranean, seized En-Nassria (Naciria) and occupied it for half a century before giving way to the Ottomans at the beginning of the 17th century.In 1833, the French troops seized the city of which they had for a long time deformed the Arabic name of Bejaïa into Bougie, name which will designate then the small candles in beeswax produced in the heights of Kabylia and exported since the XIVth century.Today, Bejaia has regained its Arabic name (Bgayet in Tamazight) but it has especially become a major oil center that has developed around the terminal of the Soummam oil pipeline that arrives here from the drilling of Hassi Messaoud.Despite this unattractive proximity, Bejaia retains a great charm, whether in the city center or in its immediate surroundings. You will quickly notice it by yourself, it is really one of the most beautiful cities of Kabylia.

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Cap Carbon. Sébastien CAILLEUX
Le port de Bejaïa. Sébastien CAILLEUX
La ville basse de Bejaïa. Mtcurado - iStockphoto
Vue depuis la place Gueydon. Jean-Paul LABOURDETTE
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