Algiers has become another Rome to me. Like the eternal city, every street and hill of its complex topography echoes with some dramatic scene from history.

Tipasa is just one of the many Roman port-cities that studded the coast of North Africa, but if you look deep into their stratigraphy they all started life as harbours of the Phoenician traders about three thousand years ago. 

As the galley pulled alongside, rather than risk any of his men unnecessarily, the commander of Our Lady of the Conception ordered that the merchantman should be raked with gunfire.  For you never knew in these waters, who was armed with what.

These kingdoms were rich in corn, olive oil and leather but not in the metals that were so highly prized in the ancient world, indeed the whole region seems to have stood outside the charmed circle of bronze age culture, passing from tools of stone, leather and wood straight into the Iron age. 

I’d gone through 90% of the bureaucratic hoops of a land-crossing from eastern Morocco, only to watch my passport being literally frisbeed out of the window of the last kiosk. After which the shutter was slammed down in a very decisive manner.