Europe's "Cities on the Edge" fight back

On January 1, two years after Liverpool and three years before Marseilles, Istanbul becomes European Capital of Culture for 2010.  For five years these great ports, together with Bremen, Gdansk and Naples, have been trying to form a network of European cities "of ill repute". 

Marseilles: a "City on the Edge"?

They are the cities that love to be hated: rebellious and out of the ordinary, founded as ports but largely insular in outlook, they are cities of football and plunder.  But they are fighting back, turning to culture to help them on the road to recovery.  In 2010 Istanbul is European Capital of Culture, two years after Liverpool and three years before Marseilles. Almost by chance these three multi-cultural cities, together with Naples, Bremen and Gdansk, have embarked on an adventure known as "Cities on the Edge", a support network of the “most hated cities in their own countries".

Crocodiles and jellyfish in the Sahara

A guelta in the Algerian Sahara

Algeria isn't the easiest country to do business in - in fact, it's the most difficult destination that we operate in - but it is the most diverse and above all, the most beautiful and the most unspoilt.

Footprints in the desert

Algeria's mountainous Tassili region, bordering Libya to the east and Niger to the south, is distinguished by its towering dunes of sand, its sheer-sided canyons and its beguiling "forests of rock". The Tassili - "plateau of the rivers" in Arabic - is an open-air treasure-trove of more than 15,000 rock carvings and cave paintings that depict pre-historic crocodiles and cattle, giraffes and jellyfish.

Starting from the white-washed oasis town of Djanet, we recently navigated the Tassili's intoxicating landscape of palm-groves, wadis and dunes by camel, on foot and by jeep. Our tour (and, remember, Culturissima wasn't in the Sahara here on holiday - this was business!) - spent three nights under the Saharan stars as we tracked down the region's gueltas, the desert water-holes that sustain the Tassili's Tuareg nomads.

On the horizon

We also sought out the tarout, the endemic Saharan cypress trees that are over 2,000 years old... but we didn't encounter one of the Sahara's most extra-ordinary living creatures - crocodylus niloticus, an indigenous dwarf crocodile! Maybe next time!

F N Born 12 May 1820, Died 13 August 1910

At the moment I am putting together a collection of historical and cultural tours, many of which have a strong biographical element, for a British heritage organisation.

Next year (2010) sees the 100th anniversary of the death of a veritable heroine, Florence Nightingale. I've begun researching Florence’s life, and one of the first things that has struck me is Nightingale's strangely silent grave, where the memorial for one of the 19th century’s most lauded figures is no more eloquent than:

F.N. Born 12 May 1820, Died 13 August 1910.

"A wild swan" to her mother, "the lady with the lamp" to the readers of the contemporaneous Illustrated London News, the founder of modern nursing was many things: a tireless campaigner, an accomplished mathematician and statistician, and, I’ve just discovered, even the author of a novella, Cassandra.

Following in Nightingale’s footsteps has led me to stumble on one of London’s most unexpected curiosities. I already knew about the newly-extended Florence Nightingale Museum, located on the site of the pioneering nursing school that she founded at St Thomas’ Hospital in 1860. But the remains of the original St Thomas’ - named after Thomas Becket and Thomas the Apostle - lie eastwards around a bend in the Thames. Tucked away at the top of a rickety spiral staircase in the attic of St Thomas’s Church is England’s oldest surviving operating theatre, constructed in 1822, and, believe me, it doesn’t require much imagination to hear the screams of those pre-anesthetic days! Equally fascinating is the lonely garret used by the hospital’s apothecary to store and cure the medicinal herbs used during the operations.

Algeria celebrates victory over Egypt

This article was first published in When Saturday Comes November 19, 2009

They think they've won it already

I have to admit that I was scared for ten or so minutes after the final whistle blew here in Oran, Algeria last night. I watched Les Verts' World Cup play-off game with Egypt in a cafe in darkened streets of a city that I don't know. Anthar Yahia's 40th minute goal, a Van Basten-esque angled volley, unleashed the country's wildest celebrations since July 1962 – the month Algeria secured its bloody independence from France. Chairs flew over the road, aerosal sprays flashed into the sky, cars vroomed down the streets backwards and sideways, kids slalomed between klaxoning motorbikes and I had to duck once or twice to avoid the fireworks thrown like confetti.

More than 12 hours after the game ended, I've had to close my hotel window to keep out the noise of honking cars on the street 13 floors below. Even the barbus – the Islamic fundamentalists who for ten years brought the country to its knees – are dancing in the streets.

On the streets of Algiers

It is impossible for a European to imagine the rivalry that exists between the Fennecs and the Pharaohs. In Algiers, the offices of Air Egypt were burnt down two days ago. As the final qualifying group match drew to a close last Saturday, with Algeria minutes away from automatic qualification for South Africa, Algerian television's John Motson could restrain himself no longer. “Win it boys, win it for our million martyrs, show Egypt that Algeria never retreats," a barbed allusion to the fact that Algeria won their war against France but Egypt lost theirs against Israel.

After last weekend's two-nil defeat, Algerian president Abdelaziz Bouteflika commandeered half of Air Algérie's fleet to convey supporters to neutral Khartoum for yesterday's play-off match – a move that nearly backfired when disappointed fans ransacked Algiers airport on learning there were not enough planes to go around. Such disappointment is a distant memory this morning as Algeria unites in ear-splitting harmony. Chanting supporters, young and old (including a fair helping of women) are once more bringing the streets, and the entire transport network, to a halt. Want a taxi, train or plane? Ask again in a couple of days.

Today's mass-selling Le Soir d'Algérie, normally a French-language newspaper, is headlined with a single word in Arabic: Dernaha (We've done it!) and inside we learn that the mountains, wadis, villages and dunes of the Algerian Sahara are emblazoned with a familiar-sounding slogan: "Impossible n'est pas algérien." Both on the streets and in the media everyone is hoping, everyone is – ironically – praying that football fever will hammer the final nail in the coffin of fundamentalism.

Do you speak Malti?

Valletta, capital of Malta

I'm in Malta again, having spent the day in the heavily-fortified capital, Valletta, trying to find someone to open the ever-locked doors of the Church of St Paul's Shipwreck. Tomorrow, it seems, I'll be able to get inside... though I was told the same thing yesterday, as I recall, and the day before.

Something that strikes me every time I walk around the narrow streets of Valletta - surely one of Europe's most unsung capitals - is the "foreignness" of the Maltese language. Last night I was waiting to buy a ticket for the Manoel Theatre; the receptionist was talking to her friend in Maltese and not a single word, not a single syllable, even, was intelligible - just a series of guttural sounds (and lots of Italian-like arm-waving). Once I got her attention, though, she burst into perfect, unaccented English. In fact, everyone I have ever come across in Malta, with the exception of one very old man I met who lived on an isolated farm, speaks first-rate English.

The Maltese have two official tongues: Maltese - Malti - and English, with Italian also being widely spoken (and Juventus being one of the most popular football teams!). In public life, though, including parliament, the church and the press; as well as in quotidian conversation; it's Malti that is the preferred choice. No surprise, really, as this unique language has been one of the most important factors in enabling Malta to maintain it's status as a separate nation state.

If you think about it, none of the other Mediterranean islands - Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica; is a country in its own right (in spite of repeated attempts to gain independence in some cases). To the ears of most Western visitors, including me, the Malti language sounds distinctly like Arabic (just as parts of the countryside, dry and dusty, resemble Tunisia or Libya). And, sure enough, the origins of Malti can be traced back to the North African Arabs who invaded Malta and Gozo in 870 AD. In fact, Malti is the only Semitic language to be written in the Latin script - with the addition of special characters to accommodate certain Semitic sounds.

Whilst Malti has always preserved its Arabic roots, its development owes much to the Romance languages of the Normans, who occupied Malta in 1090, and the Italians some 500 years later; and, of course, to English.

Temple of the Giants

Azure Window, Gozo

The fortress island of Malta - known to the Romans as Melita - must be one of Europe's most unsung destinations. Malta and her rural neighbour, Gozo (a 35 minute ferry ride from the northern tip of Malta), revel in a boggling array of historical sites - and that's the reason I'm on my fifth visit here.

I'm based, as ever, in the south-west of the island, and have just returned from a visit to the fishing village of Marsaxlokk, invaded by the Ottoman Turks in 1565 and by Napoleon's army in 1798. In more recent times - exactly 20 years ago (I think!) - Marsaxlokk harbour hosted the Bush-Gorbachev summit.

The world's oldest human structures - more ancient than the Pyramids, more antique than Stonehenge - are to be found on Malta and Gozo. Perhaps the most bewitching testimony to Malta's pre-historic past is the Hypogeum, an elaborate burial chamber plunging three storeys beneath the earth.

By contrast, the time-worn, sea-blown stones of Hagar Qim and Mnajdra occupy dramatic sites overlooking the Mediterranean. Gozo is home to Ggantija, the Temple of the Giants, as well as the Azure Window, where every year I meet the man who, it is claimed, is Malta's richest resident.

Steve's ruse is simple: he waits for the tourist buses to decant their contents and then simply walks up to each tourist in turn and puts a guide book or a selection of post-cards in their hands. If they want them, they buy them - at a hefty mark-up, of course (and, it goes without saying that he never has any change and we're in the middle of nowhere). If they're not turned on by his tatty old postcards or dog-eared guides, well, that's when the fun begins.

Temple of Ggantija, Gozo

Because Steve won’t take them back. He only has one arm and he keeps that steadfastly locked to his side, his hand jammed in his pocket. What is the tourist to do? His only option is to drop them on the floor. But the rocks are riddled with puddles, and this will only ruin poor Steve's stock. And who wants to ruin the livelihood of a one-armed man? So, inevitably, the visitor ends up paying up... and Steve, with a wink and a nod in my direction, gets rich.

New England in the Fall

Shaker Mill, earlier this summer

Few destinations can match the range of historic towns that New England has to offer: not just Boston but also Salem, inextricably linked to the witchcraft hysteria of the 1690s, and Stockbridge, scene of an early social experiment in "Englishing" the Native Americans.

Concord is doubly famed, both as the site of the second engagement of the Revolution, when embattled farmers “fired the shot heard around the world”, and as the home of the celebrated literary flowering of the first half of the 19th century.

The Mount, home of Edith Wharton

Indeed, a panoply of literary and artistic figures has made this corner of North America their home: Nathaniel Hawthorne (author of The Scarlet Letter), Edith Wharton (the first woman of American letters) and Robert Frost (America’s unofficial poet laureate) all lived in New England, and it was here that the continent’s most engrossing novel, Moby Dick, was penned.

On a recent research trip to New England for Culturissima I also familiarised myself with two painters dear to American hearts, Norman Rockwell and Grandma Moses, along with one of the country's most beloved sculptors, Daniel Chester French.

Chesterwood

The cultural delights of New England stretch far beyond the shores of America; we also visited three art collections of international repute: the Clark Art Institute, so unexpected a discovery amongst the remote hills of New England, houses a striking collection of Renoir, Monet and Degas, not to mention a captivating selection of Winslow Homer. The chefs d'oeuvre in Boston's Museum of Fine Arts range from Italian and Dutch Old Masters to van Gogh, Matisse and Picasso, whilst the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum displays work by Titian and Botticelli, Whistler and Sargent.

The Safir

The Safir, central Algiers

Central Post Office, Algiers

On my visits to Algiers on behalf of Culturissima I invariably stay at the Hotel Safir on the city's esplanade. Built by the French in the early 20th century, the Safir is located just next to the Assemblé Nationale and overlooks the port of Algiers.

For first-time visitors to Algeria's capital, arriving at the "four-star" Safir can be something of a disappointment.

Before the disappointment, though, comes the fear: Why is there a road-block outside? What are all those policemen doing with guns?

The answer to the second question is simple: bugger all - they are trained by the French, after all. And the road-block? Well, because of the threat of terrorist attacks, security is pretty tight outside all the major hotels in Algiers. At the Aurassi, for example, cars are banned from parking within bombing distance of the hotel. At the George you have to endure three separate security checks before you're allowed to enter the historic interior (such draconian measures might seem something of a fag, but, once it's dawned on you that the George is one of the few places in Algeria that openly serves booze, well, they seem a small price to pay).

When I'm showing English guests around Algeria on behalf of one of Culturissima's clients, I usually advise them that, though they might be disappointed in the Safir on arrival, by the time they've tasted the other hotels that Algeria has to offer, they'll come to view the Safir as a pleasure palace. Sure, it's crumbling at the seams; sure, it's home to the world's oldest, scariest lift; sure, the staff all seem to have been trained under the Soviets" but it has a certain je ne sais quoiand, as most of the guests are Algerian, you're far less likely to be kidnapped here than anywhere else. 

The Safir - or the Aletti as it was known under the French - has a fascinating war-time history. More on that later. For the time-being, here are some photos taken in and around the hotel.

Harraga and Hittistes II

It gets worse (see Harraga and Hittistes I).

There are reports coming out of Algeria that towards the end of August the Algerian coast-guard intercepted two-dozen would-be clandestine escapees, known as harraga and the subject of my earlier post.

Nothing new in that, except to say that one of these 21st century "boat people" was a man aged 70.

Why should a man in his twilight years flee the only country that he has ever known for seven decades?

"I wanted to get to France"

"But why?"

"To see my five children who've been living there for years and years. I've asked (the Algerian authorities) so many times for a visa to visit them, but each time en vain".

Pockets of England II

I take that back.

Having previously written that it's the unknown treasures of the south-east of England that have most fascinated me over the last few weeks, I now think that the south-west has as much - if not more - to offer the cultural traveller.

Devon seems to have everything, from the vast expanses of Dartmoor to small towns and villages such as Sidmouth and Budleigh Salterton. What's equally amazing is that the tranquil countryside is so easily accessible: within five minutes of leaving Exeter airport, for example, you find yourself driving through country lanes past traditional English pubs - a world away from the hustle and bustle of Paris, where our journey had started just over an hour earlier.

South Devon is graced with a generous collection of small manor houses, many of them privately-owned and seldom-visited.

Mothecombe, blessed with an estate running down to the sea, is a perfect Queen Anne doll's house with later additions by Sir Edwin Lutyens, whilst Sharpham, set in a Capability Brown landscape overlooking the River Dart, is an exquisite Palladian villa by Sir Robert Taylor.

Is it cheating?

Returning, very briefly, to the idea that the Brits might be more "aspirational" than the French, the two countries certainly have different codes of behaviour when it comes to things sportif.

So, for example, in beating Paris to secure the right to host the next Olympic Games, London clearly cheated. How? Because Lord Coe and his team - "perfide Albion" to the French - lobbied behind the scenes.

They did what? Um, yes, they went out of their way to chat up the presidents of the other Olympic committees.

Then, during the last Tour de France, the British cyclist Mark Cavendish, who won six stages on French territory, was guilty of something very close to cheating in French eyes.

What did Cavendish do? He took drugs? No. But his experience as a youngster as a track cyclist - where it’s possible to develop a very explosive style - gave Cavendish an unfair advantage in the mass sprint finishes that characterised this year’s Tour de France. And, what’s more, he had the best team on his side.

I’ve given up trying to put the Brit point of view: that, in both of the above cases, it’s the professionalism of Coe and Cavendish that helped them secure their prizes. You can’t win races on skill and innate talent alone - you have to have aspirations to go beyond what you were born with. In a sense, it’s your duty to do everything you can - legally - to win, isn’t it, if you’re in the position of professionals such as Coe and Cavendish?

“Ah”, reply my French friends, “but you don’t have more skill than us, just more money…”

Hairy, club-carrying and wood-dwelling

As well as unearthing the story of Florence Nightingale, my current work for Culturissima and English Heritage has been introducing me to a handful of historical figures whom I was previously only dimly aware of.

One of my favourite discoveries is General Augustus Pitt Rivers (1827-1900), a soldier and archaeologist extra-ordinaire. Widely considered the father of modern British archaeology, the General was also a committed philanthropist: from the early 1890s onwards he set about designing Larmer Tree Gardens,"an extraordinary example of Victorian extravagance and vision" set in the heart of Dorset, south-west England.

Pitt Rivers created Larmer for the delectation and delight of the general public, and, as well as admiring the parkland, pagodas and free-flying parrots, it’s also possible to visit some of the ancient burial sites and villages unearthed by Pitt Rivers. A modern equivalent of Pitt Rivers is Martin Green, one of Dorset’s foremost field archaeologists, whose private museum at Down Farm houses the archaeological remains that Green has excavated on his land over the past 40 years.

Sir Robert Walpole (1676-1745) is another of the colourful characters who has been populating my working life (and dreams!) over the past couple of weeks. Walploe is a British politician who dominated parliament for over two decades; in fact, he’s generally regarded as Britain's first prime minister.

Born at Houghton Hall in Norfolk, one of England’s grandest country houses, and later educated at Eton and Cambridge, Walpole was the first prime minister to live and work at 10 Downing Street. Life wasn’t always so easy for Sir Bob, though: ridiculed as Sir Blustering by his enemies, he sailed closed to corruption on more than one occasion and even spent six months marooned in the Tower of London.

My favourite encounter of the last few weeks, though, hasn’t been with an archaeologist or politician.

Hairy, club-carrying and wood-dwelling, the wild man or "woodwose" is a familiar figure in mediaeval art and literature. Part-man, part-beast, he - and sometimes even she - can still be seen going about his daily business, whether it’s hunting lions with a Herculean club or throwing a pagan stare over a congregation of Christians. The wild man is carved into the very fabric of Norfolk and Suffolk: the region’s early churches and historic houses, even its heraldic coat of arms, bear fertile witness to the potency of the woodwose. East Anglia is still alive, too, with tales of beasts and monsters - including the 12th century wild man of Orford:

Men fishing in the sea caught in their nets a wild man. He was naked and was like a man in all his members, covered with hair and with a long shaggy beard. Brought into church, he showed no signs of reverence or belief.

Ce n'est pas possible!

The Algerian Embassy in Paris - I always venture there with mixed feelings: happy at the thought of applying for a visa to go back to Algeria... but fairly sure that something will go wrong before that visa is finally pasted into the pages of my passport.

This is the third Algerian visa I've applied for in the past few months, so I've become something of an old hand now at gathering all the required paper-work together (in multiples of at least three). And I'm pretty familiar with all the tricks of Algerian bureaucracy: you can only pay for the visa in hard cash, you have to write in block capitals in a black pen, you have to declare undying love for Algérie (and add for good measure what rotters the French were and the Americans are).

Anyway, I turned up at the embassy, just a short hop from the Arc de Triomphe here in Paris, armed with all the usual parephenalia. The visa office opens at nine-thirty in theory and ten thirty in practice. Having patiently waited my turn, I prefer to hand over a single document at a time, so I can triumph each of the clerk's triumphal looks - "Ah, but you don't have Form B52, Section A" - with my own triumphal: "Bah, si, si, Monsieur: le voilà!" This dance goes on for about ten minutes until the official asks for a document with my proof of residence on it.

It's at this point that I always say: "No, Monsieur, you are mistaken: I checked the documents on your web-site very carefully and nowhere does it say that one needs proof of residence".

"No proof of residence, no visa".

"Ce n'est pas possible! Why doesn't it say that on the web-site or in the information pack, then?

"Don't ask me. You're not French so you need proof of residence".

"I'm European, so I don't need one".

"Next!"

I then draw the proof of residence letter out of my pocket and give it to the official. He makes me wait ten minutes, says come back tomorrow at ten and collect your visa, I come back at ten to collect the visa, he says come back at ten tomorrow... and eventually I get it.

Except not this time. Because this time, unlike only a couple of months ago, the gatekeeper won't accept a letter from my bank as proof of where I live.  "You could have a bank account at one address and live at another".  "Uh, why would I do that then? I'm a law-abiding citizen", I say with a smile.

"Next!"

"Oh, comme on, you were happy with exactly the same document six weeks ago".

"That was a favour".

So what do I need? I need a letter from the French equivalent of British Telecom or British Gas. "But", I point out, "I am renting my flat, it's in my girlfriend's name, so I don't have anything like that".

His response? The owner of the flat has to write a letter, go to the town hall, get it stamped, then I have to bring it in to the embassy, he'll get it stamped... et voilà, I can start to apply for the visa all over again.

One small problem, I say: the owner of the flat lives in America.  "Okay, he has to..." well, all of the above, but in addition he has to get the document translated into French first... yeah, right, in the middle of the American mid-west. I decided it would be easier to get the visa from the British Embassy in London.

When I told this story to an Algerian friend, she pointed out: it costs an Algerian living in Algeria three times as much money to get a visa to come to London; they have to queue for three times as long; and then the embassy never writes to them to tell them whether they've been successful or not... so they have to go through all the queuing a second or a third time to see whether they can come to sunny old England.

Fat ladies, a beheading and the Clapham Junction mystery

The first time I set foot on Malta, seven years ago now, I was here on the trail of a gruesome beheading. Faith, Hope and Charity was the theme of my next visit, whilst more recently I've made the trip across the Mediterranean in an attempt sniff out the truth behind Clapham Junction.

The Grand Harbour, Valletta, Malta

Every time that I touch down at Valletta airport though, I've only got one thing on my mind: how to avoid being seduced - yet again - by the honey-coloured island's elephantine-wasted, dainty-ankled fat ladies.

No one does tack like a Maltese Catholic: think Lourdes made-over by a nouveau riche east European gay - that will give you some idea of the cacophony of colour and the überglitz that boggles the mind when walks across the threshold of even the smallest Baroque church (as in the two photos).

To be continued.

Were the first Europeans cannibals?

Culturissima is just back from a short trip to Spain, where we had the good fortune to visit the caves of Atapuerca. On our return to Paris we stumbled on the following article in the French newspaper Le Figaro, which has just been translated by Culturissima's David Winter.


A Spanish archaeologist claims that fossilised remains found in Atapuerca in Spain bear traces of cannibalism. Registered on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 2000, Atapuerca is one of the largest archaeological sites in Europe.  


Fossilised remains found on the site of Atapuerca, thought to belong to the first Europeans, have revealed that pre-historic man was cannibalistic and enjoyed eating the flesh of children and teenagers. One of the co-ordinators of the Atapuerca project, José Maria Bermudez de Castro, told the French news agency AFP: "We now know that they practised cannibalism".

Pockets of England I

In spite of the pervasiveness of mass tourism, it still requires little effort to delve into pockets of England, Scotland and Wales that remain little-visited and little-known. Maybe it's because, until the recent "credit crunch", the British preferred to holiday abroad than set out in discovery of the cultural delights of their own island.

I'm in the middle of finishing an assignment that has taken me as far north as the Highlands of Scotland and as far south of the Scilly Isles. It's the south-east corner of England that has fascinated me the most, though. 

From the subterranean vestiges of Roman Canterbury to the Bacchic frescoes of Dover's Painted House, Kent is steeped in Roman history. Richborough was probably the site of Claudius' invasion of Britain in AD 43, whilst the coastal fort at Reculver stood sentinel over a chain of fortifications that once stretched from the Isle of Wight to the Wash.

Dover Castle, recently restored by English Heritage, is one of my favourite "discoveries", as it has allowed me to re-read the story of Henry II and his wicked treatment of Thomas Becket, archbishop of Canterbury. Henry re-built Dover Castle at great expense to accommodate wealthy pilgrims on their way to the shrine of Becket, the very man (this "turbulent priest") he had murdered!

South Wales, seldom explored by the cultural travaller, boasts some of Britain's most rewarding Roman monuments and mediaeval remains. Caerleon, for example, is the best preserved legionary fortress in the western Roman empire. Founded in AD 75, ancient Isca - once the base of the Second Augustan Legion - bears substantial traces of its illustrious past: fortified defences, barracks, baths and a military amphitheatre extensively excavated by Mortimer Wheeler.

Then, in the far north, Northumbria is home to the twin Anglo-Saxon monasteries at Monkwearmouth and Jarrow, the United Kingdom's nomination for UNESCO World Heritage status in 2010.

Harraga and Hittistes I

When I was working in Algeria earlier this year, the big talking point in the street cafés of Annaba (in the north-east of the country) was that, for the first time, the body of a girl - a young girl, a girl with her whole life ahead of her - had been found washed up on the sea-shore near the former French city of Bône.

Corpses - bloated and anonymous - have become an increasingly common sight on the beaches of Algeria's Mediterranean coast over the past three or four years. The country has, on the whole, become resigned to the nightmarish phenomenon of young men, usually in their twenties but sometimes in their teens, so desperate to avoid the misery of their homeland that they flee their patria by any possible means.

And the most common means is to pay a faceless, moral-free "shark" to convey them across the Mediterranean to mainland Europe - on boats that, more often than not, are doomed never to reach their destination. 

It is hard for a western European to imagine such desperate hopelessness: would you do anything, absolutely anything, would you knowingly risk your life, for a "better future" that might involve - if you’re lucky - ending up ten to a room in some seedy Parisian hostel? Yet this is the El Dorado, the profane Mecca, not just for troops of young Algerians but also for many Libyans and Moroccans and, indeed, a sizeable slice of sub-Saharan Africa.

A few years ago, in the middle of the Sahara, I stumbled across a Nigerian man, little more than a boy, who was walking the length of the desert to reach Tripoli and, he hoped, eventually the southern shores of Italy. This young man wasn't, as I later learned, some rara avis. A Tuareg guide told me that earlier that year, as he was searching for firewood in the Akakus region of the Libyan Sahara, he had encountered the corpses of nearly fifty men, bleached and burned by the African sun, who, seeking shadow where there is none, had died of the hands of thirst.

So, to return to the cafes of Annaba: why was every Algerian seemingly talking about the unidentified girl washed up on the shore?  Quite simply because hers was the first female body that had ever been found. Up to that moment the harraga - literally "those who burn (their identity papers)" - had all been men seeking to avoid the life of the hittiste, "those who prop up the walls (because there's nothing else to do)". Now, for the first time, Algeria, this most patriarchal of countries, was having to wake up to the fact that life was as meaningless for its young brides-to-be as for its disenchanted manhood.
 
It begs the question: when will the Algerian government acknowledge the misery of its citizens? And when will we in the west have the desire to do something about these weekly mass migrations?

For hittistes, see this link, and for an evocative description of the desperation that drives young North Africans to desert their homeland, see Tahar Ben Jelloun's Partir.

Alger La Blanche

The port of Algiers

Culturissima has visited Algeria twice in 2009 to carry out some research on behalf of a British cultural tour operator and can confirm that the Roman sites of Timgad, Tipasa and Tiddis are as beautiful and as captivating as ever… and that the capital Algiers remains one of the Mediterranean's most alluring cities, its superb French architecture an entirely unexpected delight for most European visitors (who are still avoiding Algeria en masse!). 

Caryatids in central Algiers

I was fortunate enough to take a whole-day excursion through some of Algeria’s most breath-taking scenery to the oasis town of Biskra, situated on the northern fringes of the Sahara. My journey south took me through the Aurès Mountains and the gorge of Tighanimine to Biskra, gateway to the desert, where a local family invited me to eat in their private palm grove. En route I visited the abandoned canyon village of Rhoufi and passed through El Kantara, once known as Calceus Herculis (Hercules' Boot).

I’m now back on the coast, at the Hotel Safir, once the favoured haunt of Charlie Chaplin, of all people, overlooking the Bay of Algiers. It’s comforting to be back here - it’s familiar territory to me - but, as I’ve said elsewhere, everyone should have the chance to step foot in the Sahara at least once during their lives.

The mark of Baron Haussmann is alive and well in Algiers

The Bay of Algiers

I lived in Algeria for two years as a child and it is a country I love deeply: the historical sites are superb - Tiddis, with its remote hill-top setting, is perhaps my favourite - and the Algerians I have met have shown nothing but warmth, friendship, respect and hospitality. If you've enjoyed travelling in the Maghreb or Libya, then you are likely to find Algeria an even more rewarding (and even more adventurous!) destination.

Over the coming weeks I hope I’ll be able to write a little more about some of the towns I’ve visited and the people I met.

I am the great lion of the day

Part of Culturissma's monthly schedule is to brief our clients on up-coming art exhibitions so that they can steal a march on their rivals. We've just got wind of a new offering at London's Tate Britain, Turner and the Masters, which will be the first ever exhibition to examine the influence of the Old Masters on J M W Turner.  As well as displaying some of Turner's most scintillating canvases, Turner and the Masters will showcase around 100 works by Canaletto, Poussin, Rubens, Rembrandt and Constable.

Born in 1775, Turner - the London-born son of a barber - was always confident of his abilities, once proclaiming: "I am the real lion. I am the great lion of the day". The Tate exhibition will investigate the complexity of Turner's obsession with the Old Masters as he strove first to imitate, then rival and finally surpass the style of Rubens, Rembrandt and Claude Lorrain.  Acts of homage will hang alongside sophisticated forms of art criticism in an exhibition that is likely to re-establish Turner's reputation as the greatest painter of landscape in the European tradition.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir in Paris

One of Renoir's former homes in Montmartre,
with the Sacré Coeur in the background

I have the good fortune to live among the cobbled streets of Montmartre, within rioting distance of the Sacré Coeur and just a fifteen minute bicycle ride - all downhill - to the Louvre and the Musée d’Orsay.    My apartment overlooks a narrow, winding road that was painted by, amongst others, Cézanne, Picasso, van Gogh and the unfortunate Utrillo.

Lodged on the corner of our narrow lane is the pink façade of the famous Lapin Agile bistro, where the likes of Picasso, Utrillo, Derain, Braque and Modigliani once held court. It’s in this bar, formerly known as the Cabaret des Assassins, that a donkey once painted a canvas - Sunset on the Adriatic Sea - that ended up being hung in the prestigious annual Salon des Independents! It’s a lovely spot, too, to open a bottle of wine in the early evening in summer, as the sun comes streaming down the hill.

Picasso is never far from our thoughts here in Montmartre: to reach my local bar, I meander down the southern slopes of the hill past the Laundry Boat - Le Bateau Lavoir - where he once lived and painted.   There's another, more personal, connection, too: I bought my apartment from a chap - the make-up artist for President Mitterand's wife, as it happens - whose new next door neighbour, just five minutes away, is Picasso's former lover and the mother of his children, Claude and Paloma.  Her name is Francoise Gilot and, though Picasso died in 1973, Mme Gilot is still very much alive and kicking - and painting, too, as she is a celebrated painter in her own right.

Anyway, at the moment Culturissima is busy setting up two art tours for a major British client, a company that runs cultural and historic programmes across the world. The first tour is called "In The Footsteps of The Impressionists" and the second, "Renoir in Paris".  

The latter has been timed to coincide with a Renoir retrospective, Les Dernières Années, that will be held at the Grand Palais, just off the Champs Elysées, at the end of 2009.  This exhibition, details of which have yet to be released to the general public, will concentrate on the final period of Renoir's life when his nudes, later to influence Bonnard, Matisse and Picasso, drew their inspiration from the Old Masters.

Renoir's house in autumn, with
the Montmartre vineyard in the foreground

Although born in Limoges, Renoir se considérait comme un Parisien, according to his son. He lived part of his childhood alongside the former Tuileries Palace - and even used to disturb the Queen of France with his games! - before eventually settling in bucolic Montmartre, a world away from the new Paris of the demolition man, Baron Haussmann. One of Renoir’s first houses was in rue Cortot, now a museum and it was on the hill of Montmartre, with its vineyard, windmills and sweet-smelling gardens, that Renoir painted and here one can still see the Moulin de la Galette, the windmill immortalised in the eponymous painting on display at the Musée d'Orsay.