Current Time in Batna City, Algeria

Batna stands in northeastern Algeria at the heart of the Aurès Mountains, on a high plateau roughly a thousand metres above sea level where the Tell Atlas and the Saharan Atlas ranges converge. The setting is one of bare limestone ridges, cedar forests and wide upland basins, and the climate is far more severe than the Mediterranean coast to the north, with hot dry summers and cold winters that bring regular snowfall to the surrounding peaks.

Around three hundred thousand people live in the city, which is the capital of Batna Province and the largest urban centre in the Aurès. It is the commercial, administrative and educational focus for a mountainous region whose economy rests on cereals, sheep farming, fruit growing, textiles and food processing.

Batna is a comparatively young city. It was established in 1844 as a French military camp guarding the routes into the mountains, laid out on a regular grid that still defines the centre, and it grew steadily as a garrison and market town. The mountains around it, however, carry a much older history. The Aurès is the homeland of the Chaoui, a Berber people whose language and traditions remain strong, and the region was a centre of resistance in antiquity, in the Islamic conquest period and again during the Algerian war of independence, which began in the Aurès in November 1954.

The greatest attractions lie a short distance from the city. Timgad, some thirty five kilometres east, is one of the best preserved Roman colonial towns anywhere, founded by the emperor Trajan around the year one hundred as a settlement for veterans and laid out on a perfect grid with a forum, a theatre for several thousand spectators, baths, a library and the great arch of Trajan. It is inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List and its ruins stand in open country against a mountain backdrop. Lambaesis, closer to Batna, was the fortress of the Third Augustan Legion and preserves an imposing headquarters building, while Imedghassen, to the northwest, is a stepped royal mausoleum of the Numidian kings built several centuries before the Romans arrived.

Belezma National Park, on the city's doorstep, protects one of the last important stands of Atlas cedar together with Barbary deer and a rich birdlife, and the Ghoufi canyon to the south, with its cliffside villages and palm gardens, is among the most photographed landscapes in Algeria.

The city itself offers a lively central market, mosques, a museum of local history and a cuisine known for chakhchoukha, couscous with mountain herbs and grilled lamb. Chaoui music and poetry are performed at festivals through the year.

Batna is connected by rail and road to Constantine and Algiers and by Mostefa Ben Boulaïd Airport to the capital. Buses and taxis serve the town.

The University of Batna, divided into two large institutions, teaches medicine, engineering, law and the humanities and gives the city a considerable student presence.

Batna is important as the capital of the Aurès and as the natural base for exploring some of the finest Roman remains in Africa.