Algeria

Algeria: capital Algiers, population 47.4M, area 2,381,741 km². The 33rd most populous country, in Africa. Facts, map, neighbours and more.

Algeria is the largest country in Africa and the tenth largest in the world, spanning 2,381,741 square kilometres of which the Sahara takes most, with the population gathered in the fertile, mountainous north. Numidia became one of the earliest major states of the region, Rome left Timgad and Djémila among the best-preserved towns in North Africa, and the Zirids laid out the Casbah of Algiers in the tenth century. Arabic and Amazigh are the official languages, French keeps a large role without official status, and raï came out of Oran in the 1920s.

• Masinissa united the eastern and western Numidian tribes into the Kingdom of Numidia, ruled for 54 years to the age of 90, and left a tomb at Cirta inscribed MSNSN, read as Their Lord.
• Trajan founded Timgad in the Aurès around 100 CE and named it for his mother Marcia, his sister Ulpia Marciana and his father; it survives as the best example anywhere of the Roman grid plan.
• The Zirids founded the Casbah of Algiers in 944 and laid out its urban framework in the tenth century, on a site that had been a Phoenician port and then Berber and Roman.
• The Regency of Algiers, set up in 1516, grew into a largely autonomous state owing only nominal allegiance to the Ottomans and stayed a major Mediterranean power for nearly three centuries.

• Augustine was born at Thagaste in Numidia in 354 and became bishop of Hippo Regius; his Confessions counts as the first Western autobiography and he is one of the four Great Latin Church Fathers.
• Albert Camus, a French writer born in 1913 in Algeria and schooled in philosophy at the University of Algiers, took the 1957 Nobel at 44, its second-youngest winner and the first born in Africa.
• Assia Djebar was elected to the Académie française on 16 June 2005, the first writer from the Maghreb elected to it, and had taken the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 1996.
• Kateb Yacine wrote novels and plays in both French and Algerian Arabic and argued the Berber case; his best-known work is the novel Nedjma, published in 1956.

• Tassili n'Ajjer spreads over more than 72,000 square kilometres of Saharan mountain and holds one of the most important groupings of prehistoric rock art in the world; UNESCO listed it in 1982.
• Djémila, the Roman Cuicul, keeps a theatre, two fora, temples, basilicas and arches, and was listed in 1982 for the way its builders fitted Roman planning to a mountain site.
• The Hoggar Mountains cover roughly 550,000 square kilometres of the central Sahara along the Tropic of Cancer, and Mount Tahat, Algeria's highest peak, stands inside their cultural park.
• Ghardaïa is one of five hilltop towns of the M'Zab pentapolis, built nearly a thousand years ago by the Mozabites; the valley became a World Heritage Site in 1982.

• Raï came out of Oran in the 1920s among the poor, and Khaled has sold over 80.5 million albums with it, which makes him the best-selling Arabic-language singer on record.
• Algeria added Tamazight to its constitution as an official language in 2016; the Berber languages were historically written in Libyco-Berber, which survives today as Tifinagh.
• Couscous, steamed granules of rolled semolina served under a stew, is a staple across the Maghreb and was added to UNESCO's heritage list in 2020.
• Arabic and Amazigh are Algeria's official languages and most people speak the Algerian dialect of Arabic, while French persists in media and education with no official status at all.

What is the capital of Algeria?

The capital of Algeria is Algiers.

What is the population of Algeria?

Algeria has about 47.4M people — the 33rd most populous country in the world.

How big is Algeria?

Algeria covers 2,381,741 km², making it the 10th largest country by area.

Which region is Algeria in?

Algeria is in Northern Africa, Africa.