History · سيرتا
Two thousand years on a rock
Numidian capital, Roman city, seat of the beys, city of bridges. Constantine has changed its name and its rulers, never its cliff.
تاريخFrom Cirta to today
Cirta
Before Constantine, there was Cirta
Long before its bridges, the rock was a natural fortress: a plateau surrounded on three sides by the Rhumel canyon. The Numidians made it their royal city and called it Cirta, a name often traced back to an ancient word for "the city".
From here, Numidian kings ruled the lands between Carthage and Mauretania. Their coins, inscriptions and tombs still surface around Constantine, and many of them rest today in the Cirta National Museum.
Layers of time
Every era left a stone
Numidian foundations, Roman galleries, Ottoman palaces, European façades and modern mosques all share the same few square kilometres of rock.
