Today we invite you to visit Algeria and explore Timgad, a forgotten Roman city on the edge of the Sahara desert, which has been under the sand for almost a thousand years.
Positively obscure compared to the international notoriety of Pompeii, this ancient town is one of the best remaining examples of Roman city planning anywhere in the historical Empire.
Timgad photographed by Brian Brake for LIFE magazine, 1965
No one believed the first European explorer of the 18th century to have discovered a Roman city in the North African desert, and the whole site wouldn’t be uncovered and excavated until the 1950’s. Rome still is well worth a visit, but some of the most remarkable remains of the Romans in the whole world can be found in Algeria.
The first thing you might be thinking when looking at these aerial photographs is that our modern grid design for cities is not so modern after all. Long before New York City had its “grid” street system, Timgad was designed with an orthogonal grid which is lined by a partially restored Corinthian colonnade, magnificently visible from above. And it’s the the oldest of its kind in the world.
Originally founded by the Emperor Trajan in 100 AD and built as a retirement colony for soldiers living nearby, within a few generations of its birth, the outpost had expanded to over 10,000 residents of both Roman, African, as well as Berber descent.
Most of them would likely never even have seen Rome before, but Timgad invested heavily in high culture and Roman identity, despite being thousands of kilometres from the Italian city itself.
Timgad photographed by Brian Brake for LIFE magazine, 1965
Timgad photographed by Brian Brake for LIFE magazine, 1965
The extension of Roman citizenship to non-Romans was a carefully planned strategy of the Empire – it knew it worked better by bringing people in than by keeping them out. In return for their loyalty, local elites were given a stake in the great and powerful Empire, benefitted from its protection and legal system, not to mention, its modern urban amenities such as Roman bath houses, theatres and a fancy public library…
Timgad, also known as Thamugadi in old Berber, is home to a very rare example of a surviving public library from the Roman world. Built in the 2nd century, the library would have housed manuscripts relating to religion, military history and good governance.