Grand Mosque

Constantine is graced with Souk el-Ghazal Mosque and several other beautiful mosques, but these are only open to Muslims. The oldest, and one of the most visible, is the Grand Mosque. Built in the 13th century on the site of a pagan temple, it was intended, as the Friday mosque, to hold most of the city’s population. Although it has been rebuilt over the centuries and has a modern façade, the interior has retained some of its original features, including some pillars and Corinthian capitals brought from Hippo Regius. The city’s most prominent monument – you will see its twin 107m high minarets as you approach the centre – is the Mosque of Emir Abdelkader. The project started in 1968 as a desire to build a mosque capable of accommodating 10,000 in its prayer hall, but when the then president Houari Boumediène became involved, it grew into the current, ambitious building: one of the world’s largest mosques and Algeria’s first modern Islamic university.