Algiers means the Islands—until a pier erased them
Officially tagged Capital City of Algiers to avoid confusion with the country name, the Algerian capital traces a Phoenician trading past between about 1200 and 250 BC and a formal Zirid founding by Buluggin ibn Ziri in 972. Arabic al-Jazāʾir means the Islands; a 1525 pier tied those islets to shore.
About 4.3 million people lived in the urban area in 2025, making Algiers the third-largest city on the Mediterranean. It curves along the Bay of Algiers, backed by the Mitidja Plain and mountain ranges, and has no single city government, spreading instead across many communes of Algiers Province. That sheltered setting drew first Ottoman and then French power to it.
After Phoenician, Numidian, Roman and Islamic rulers, the city became capital of the Ottoman Regency of Algiers in 1516 and held that role until France invaded in 1830, after which it ran French Algeria. From 1942 to 1944 it briefly served as the administrative seat of Free France. It has been capital of independent Algeria since the revolution ended in 1962.
Names tell the story too. Buluggin ibn Ziri built his city on the ruins of Punic Icosium and called it the islands of the Banu Mazghanna, a label the geographers al-Idrisi and Yaqut al-Hamawi also used; the shortened al-Jazāʾir later spread under the Ottomans to the whole country, giving French Algérie and English Algeria. Greeks explained Ikósion as twenty, claiming twenty companions of Hercules founded it during his labours. The four offshore islets behind the Arabic name were joined to land in 1525 by what is now the Kheireddine pier.
Whitewashed walls earned it the nickname al bidha, the white. Besides the Casbah and a large French-built quarter, it hosted the 1975 Mediterranean Games, seats the consultative council of the Arab Maghreb Union and headquarters firms such as Sonatrach and Air Algérie.
Source: Algiers
