Dâr Khidawaj al-Amia

The palace comprises three units built over three levels. From the entrance hall to the house, one turns a corner into a corridor, ensuring the privacy of the family quarters—an architectural solution used in ancient Egypt, in Mesopotamia, in Greece and in Roman houses in North Africa. This entrance hall ends in a small courtyard surrounded by the living quarters. The bedrooms are upstairs, following a tripartite organisational schema (a central space further back and two lateral areas). This disposition appeared for the first time in North Africa in Sedrata in southern Algeria, but analogous variations can be seen in Palermo in La Ziza and La Cuba palaces (twelfth century), as well as in Andalusia (Madinat al-Zahra).

Like all Algerian dwellings, Dâr Khidawaj al-Amia adopts a Maghreb-style floor plan that is organised around a central heart, a plan we can trace back to Antiquity. There is an alcove in the main living room on the third level, (the European word ‘alcove’ is derived from the Arabic word al-qubba (cupola) which, by extension, designates a room with a T plan, already present in designs from Antiquity and very widespread in Maghreb houses). A typical Arabic staircase held ‘between the walls’, with straight flights like in Europe, is covered by ribbed arches in cross sections. The window sills are low, in perfect harmony with a sitting arrangement close to the floor, as in houses in Yemen. The round arches over the door end in two base columns, giving the pilasters an Italian Renaissance aspect.

The ‘open minded’ door is used in all the rooms that give out onto the galleries, following the same principle as those in Morocco and Andalusia. These doors under galleries open out towards the exterior and disappear as their sides fold back outside of the room. This system of doors characterises the architecture of Western Maghreb and Andalusian constructions. It dates back to Antiquity when it was often employed for public buildings (the walkways of Egyptian temples, Greek agoras, the peristyles of Greek and Roman temples…). These porticos have been taken up by all styles of architecture; in modern Europe we see this on the rue de Rivoli in Paris for instance. 

A number of European influences can be seen in the decor, most notably in the entrance hall with its benches topped with fine Italian marble and decorated with triple columns. All the pillars are based on the Italian model and their decorative marble capitals are sculpted in relief in the style of Antiquity and Renaissance Italy. The large salon on the third floor was redecorated after 1830 to house the Mayor of Algiers. The tiled floor was replaced by a wooden floor and the ceilings remodelled with an excess of stucco. The Tunisian, Spanish and Dutch ceramic tiles were imported to decorate the wall of the entrance hall and the rooms on the upper floors: here we see the famous ‘palmetto’ of Valencia and the series of sailing boats in circles, especially designed in Delft for Algiers. The wooden panelling of the palace is painted in an Oriental style.