Timgad

Timgad is in Algeria, in Africa. It was a Roman town long ago.

Now it is ruins. You can still walk along its old stone streets.

Timgad lies on the northern slopes of the Aurès mountains in Algeria, 480 kilometers southeast of the capital, Algiers. Nearly 2,000 years ago it was a busy Roman town.

Today its ruins cover a large area, with columns, gateways, baths and houses. UNESCO calls Timgad an excellent example of Roman town planning, and it has been a World Heritage Site since 1982.

UNESCO places Timgad north of the Aurès massif, in a mountainous site 480 km southeast of Algiers and 110 km south of Constantine, in the commune of Timgad, Batna province. The property covers 90.54 hectares.

Inscribed in 1982 under criteria (ii), (iii) and (iv), it is described as a consummate example of a Roman military colony created from nothing, whose plan, laid out with great precision, illustrates Roman urban planning at its height.

Timgad had 14 bath houses! You can still see them.

Some houses had floors made of tiny colored stones.

The people of Timgad cared about public comfort: 14 baths can still be seen today. The houses came in many sizes, and some had beautiful mosaics, pictures made from small pieces of colored stone.

Timgad also has an arch called the Trajan Arch, city gates, markets and places for shows, all built in stone.

UNESCO highlights the attention paid to public conveniences, attested by the 14 baths still visible, and the houses of varying sizes, which 'dazzle by their sumptuous mosaics', intended to make up for the lack of precious marble.

Under criterion (iv) it lists a rich architectural inventory from the different stages of construction: the defensive system, buildings for public conveniences and spectacles, and a religious complex. It calls Timgad a living image of Roman colonization in North Africa over three centuries.

In this photo, rows of stone seats curve around a flat stone floor. Can you find the arch far away?

This photo was taken on 20 February 2015. In front, curved rows of stone seats rise around a paved half-circle, like a theater. Behind them stretch the ruins: columns, low walls and paved streets.

Far away on the left stands a stone arch, and today's houses and distant mountains line the horizon.

The photograph (20 February 2015, by Xiaotong Gao, via Panoramio) looks across the ruins from a raised viewpoint: in the foreground a semicircle of stepped stone seating around a paved half-circle, then rows of columns, low walls and paving, a stone arch at the far left and modern buildings and mountains on the horizon.

UNESCO notes that visitors to an annual festival once put pressure on the fragile ruins, and that the festival's activities were moved outside the site to protect it.