Ketchaoua Mosque

Ketchaoua Mosque in the Casbah of Algiers is a historic mosque whose architectural fabric reflects the dramatic religious and political transformations of the Algerian capital across four centuries. The mosque was originally built in 1612 during the Ottoman period and substantially rebuilt by the dey Hassan Pasha in 1794 in the distinctive Ottoman-Algerian style with whitewashed walls and tiled roofs that characterised the great mosques of the Casbah. Following the French conquest of Algiers in 1830 the mosque was forcibly converted into the Cathedral of Saint Philippe — the seat of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Algiers — and substantially reconstructed in a Moorish-Byzantine architectural style with two large bell towers and an elaborately decorated facade. After Algerian independence in 1962 the building was reconverted to a mosque and the Christian liturgical fittings were removed, although much of the nineteenth-century French architectural transformation remains visible in the current building. The mosque underwent a major Turkish-funded restoration completed in 2018 that addressed long-standing structural problems and restored the historic interior. The mosque sits at the foot of the Casbah of Algiers, the historic walled city that is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and remains a working congregational mosque while also serving as one of the most historically significant religious monuments in the country.