Identification and valuing the Spanish fortification in Algeria. Case of the town of Bejaia

Abstract

[EN] Military architecture has shaped the landscape of most Algerian towns since the dawn of time. It therefore contains an exceptional heritage related to military and defense activities. Nowadays, this legacy with its valuable shapes and traces, suffers unfortunately from a lack of recognition and is abandoned and poorly reused. Bejaia, like all Algerian coastal cities, conceals an exceptional field in military-defensive historic buildings. The typological diversity and values they carry, from the Roman occupation (33BC) to the advent of French occupation in 1833, have provided to this multi-thousandyear-old city a defensive system made of typological transformation and stratification of defensive system. In this communication, we want to present and illustrate the state of conservation and enhancement of the defensive system of the Spanish era, through the case of the fortifications of the city of Bejaia, strongly marked by the construction of fort imperial (bordj Moussa), and reconstruction of the citadel of the city