Highlands

Today capital of the sub-prefecture of Daira, "the oasis of happiness" has grown. Nevertheless, there are all the elements that made its charm of yesteryear: its medina, its large square, its many craftsmen, its market, its mosques, etc. The orientalist painter Etienne Dinet, as much inspired by the charm of the city as by the beauty of the Ouled Naïl (dancers very fashionable during the nineteenth century), chose to take up residence until the end of his life.

               Laghouat:

Founded by the Hilaliens Berber tribe Zénète, the oasis of Laghouat, 400 km from Algiers, is today an important modern city. After experiencing the successive influence of the Berbers, Arabs, Turks and French, a new city was built from 1962.

If the first testimonies of this city go back to the eleventh century, the city took a remarkable rise in the sixteenth century, when Si Hadj Aïssa became the patron saint and sheltered the population of the villages surrounding an enclosure fortified. A period described in the poems of Ben Keriou, cantor of melhoum, rural poetry still very popular today. Much later, it was the painter-writer Eugène Fromentin who gave him the nickname always used of "city gardens"