Palace of Hājj Ahmad

“Imagine a delicious opera decoration all in white marble and the most vivid colours of paint, designed in charming taste, with water spurting from fountains in the shade of orange trees and myrtles – in short, a dream of a thousand and one nights.” These were the words of Horace Vernet when he visited the palace of the Bey en 1837, barely two years after it was built. They aptly describe the special character of this place, which has enduring appeal to visitors. It is distinguished by its Baroque Moorish style in which different influences of European and Eastern styles joined in perfect symbiosis are discernable.

During the Bey’s pilgrimage to Mecca he was charmed by the architecture of the cities he passed through; in Algiers, moreover, Ottoman palaces reflected Western architecture. The Bey of Constantine owed it to himself to emulate the deys of Algiers, who imported cargos of decorative materials from Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and elsewhere.

The palace displays a rare example of inner gardens comparable to those found in Moroccan homes of the time; it is the only urban palace with gardens known in Algeria, aside from the palaces in the country. The gardens are square and surrounded by porticos, calling to mind Christian cloisters. The building is an excellent example of the meeting of diverse traditions resting on an ancient substratum; indeed it stands on the remains of the Roman city of Cirta. The palace buildings are arranged around three gardens and three courtyards, while the apartments open out onto galleries, as in all Moorish palaces. The galleries are bordered by slightly horseshoe-shaped pointed arches dropping down onto slender octagonal columns made of Italian marble topped with capitals resembling the Corinthian, Tuscan and Greco-Roman orders. Alcoves are found in all the large halls of the palace (a remote offshoot of the Iranian îwân).True to the oriental tradition, the Bey had a wing built for women only; the entrance to this harem is through a doorway framed by a casing and an arched marble cornice surmounted by a pediment with a coat of arms in a strictly Italian style.

Construction works on the palace were directed by two Algerian artisans trained in Tunis and Alexandria, while the windows and tinplate work were made by Jews from Tunis. For the decoration, the Bey instructed a merchant from Genoa to bring all the necessary materials from Italy. Italian and Spanish faïence tiles with floral and vegetal compositions (cloves, palmettes) cover the wainscoting of the palace walls up to the moulding, especially on the ground floor, in the main staircase and in the first-floor gallery. The Bey also appreciated Tunisian ceramics influenced by Iranian art, in particular the fine specimens of small tiles with polygonal motifs similar to those in the Alhambra (Grenada). A remarkable feature of the palace is the mural painting depicting the cities and ports the Bey passed through on his way to Mecca (Tunis, La Goulette, Tripoli, Alexandria, Cairo, Rhodes and Djedda). The frame creates the illusion of a drapery pinned back by large tassels that the observer lifts to admire the painting. These frescoes have been deprecated; still, they are worthy of interest and quite unique.