AHMED BEY PALACE

Hadj Ahmed, one of the mythical heroes of the anticoloniale resistance, built between 1826 and 1835 that palace, sometimes called the division's palace because he was the headquarters of the French military command. It leads to a corridor which leads to a beautiful patio, delimited by the colonnades of the galleries reserved for women (almost 390 according to the legend!), which leads to several courtyards and interior gardens. See in particular the frescoes depicting the Mediterranean dominated ports by the Ottomans, including the one showing the defeat of Charles Quint before Algiers (1541). A time occupied by the French army, he admired the artists of passage as shown by this description of the painter Horace Vernet who visited him in 1837: " Feel a delicious opera decoration, all white marble and paintings of the most vivid colors, of a charming taste, waters flowing from fountains shaded from orange, frostbite… Finally a dream of the thousand and one nights. " This dream was maintained by the size of the palace (5 610 m ²) and its courtyards and its beautiful Spanish gardens. To build it, craftsmen and artists have often used materials from old homes or in the Roman ruins of the surrounding area.

Defeated by the French, Ahmed Bey took refuge in the Aurès from where he succeeded for a time to organize the eastern resistance. He visited 1848 before he died in Algiers in 1850 where he lived under house arrest.