North gate
A Roman arch at the town's entrance.
Carole Raddato — CC BY-SA 2.0 · Carole Raddato — CC BY-SA 2.0 · Carole Raddato — CC BY-SA 2.0 · Carole Raddato — CC BY-SA 2.0 · Carole Raddato — CC BY-SA 2.0
Tiddis is the ruin of a Numidian and Roman hill town on a rocky spur above the Rhumel gorge at El Kheneg, in Beni Hamidane commune. The Romans called it Castellum Tidditanorum, a dependency of Cirta, ancient Constantine. Its streets climb in terraces up the eastern slope, from about 455 to 575 metres, in reddish stone. It joined Algeria's heritage inventory in 2007. Round Numidian tombs, or bazinas, near the gate predate Rome: a vase from the largest is radiocarbon-dated to around 250 BC. The town's patron, Quintus Lollius Urbicus, rose to govern Roman Britain. Tiddis had a bishop by 484, and locals later called it Old Constantine. André Berthier excavated it from 1941 for some three decades; much of the plateau is still unexplored. From the north gate, a Roman arch, the paved main street zigzags uphill past a church and a rock-cut cave that Berthier took for a shrine of Mithras, a reading now debated. Higher up lie the small forum, a 38-step stairway, houses partly cut into the rock and potters' kilns. With no springs, the town relied on rainwater: three linked cisterns near the top held some 350 cubic metres. Tiddis is about 15 km north-west of central Constantine as the crow flies, or 25 to 30 km by road; go by taxi or hired driver. Allow 90 minutes to three hours on steep, uneven paths, best in spring or autumn. The circular mausoleum Lollius Urbicus raised for his family stands a few kilometres north, and Constantine's Sidi M'Cid Bridge fills the rest of the day.
A Roman arch at the town's entrance.
Three linked tanks for rainwater.
A round family monument north of the site.
El Kheneg, Beni Hamidane commune, north-west of Constantine
A Roman senator whom the town honoured as its patron; an inscription here sets out his career. He governed Roman Britain under Antoninus Pius, began the Antonine Wall in Scotland and later became prefect of Rome, though whether he was born in Tiddis is debated.
Many are in the Cirta Museum in Constantine, among them votive stelae to the god Saturn, often carved with a ladder, and the fine red pottery the town made in late Roman times.