III.

Places of Interest

The city is divided into two sections. The lower part is the modern city, built by the French, with wide boulevards, theatres, cathedrals, museums, an opera house, and many educational institutions, including a university and several Muslim schools. The upper part is the old city, with narrow, twisting streets dominated by the Casbah (Kasbah), a 16th-century fortress built by the Turks, which lends its name to the entire quarter and in 1992 was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. With the post-World War II population increase, and the crowding in the native quarter, the suburbs have spread over a wide area.