Travel Guide Tenes

A little isolated on the coast, at about 70 km from Algiers, and protected by a mountainous chain, Cherchell deserves nevertheless that one lingers there, it became a little the cousin sometimes forgotten of Tipasa very close.The few excavations carried out around Cape Tizerine to the east of the city and the lighthouse erected on an ancient islet connected to the land show the existence of an urban organization at least in the 6th century BC. Two centuries later, the Phoenicians knew about Iol and its small, easily accessible port. In the first century B.C., the small city was part of the heritage of the Moorish king Bocchus, the father-in-law of Jugurtha whose fall he brought about. The Roman emperor Augustus entrusted the kingdom of Mauretania to Juba II, in 25 A.D., who chose to make Iol his capital and undertook important transformations of the city which he named Caesarea in homage to his benefactor.New archaeological discovery. At the end of 2018, while the work for the new port of goods of Algiers (intended to become a marina within five years) had just begun on the west coast of Cherchell, the ruins of a city buried in the depths were discovered: the site of El Hamdania