Roman Algeria: Tracing Rome Across the Sahara’s Edge

Before Algeria opens fully to the world, Darius Arya is taking a small group in first.

This eight-day journey traces Rome’s extraordinary footprint across North Africa — from the Mediterranean coast to the edge of the Sahara. Beginning in Algiers, built over the ancient Phoenician and Roman city of Icosium, the itinerary moves through some of the most spectacular and least-visited Roman sites anywhere in the world: Tipaza, where ruins spill dramatically across a headland above the sea; Djemila, a mountain city whose Roman mosaics rank among the finest on the continent; Timgad, Trajan’s perfectly preserved military colony and one of the greatest examples of Roman urban planning anywhere; Constantine, the ancient Cirta, dramatically set on a rocky plateau above deep gorges; and Hippo Regius, where Saint Augustine served as bishop for thirty years and where Pope Leo XIV made his historic first papal visit to Algeria in 2026. The journey concludes with a venture south into the desert — to El Kantara, where a Roman bridge still spans a mountain gorge at the literal threshold of the Sahara.

Rome built an empire here. Most of it is still waiting to be discovered.