The house
The story of the house
A building of 1912 on the heights of El Biar, a family, years of silence, then a flame lit again. A work of fiction, like this whole demonstration.
Where the name comes from
Dar Chemâa, « the house of the candle »: the story goes that the first family kept a candle burning in the top-floor window for those coming home late from the city. The house kept the name, and the candle.
The years of the house
1912
The building
A family from Algiers builds a five-storey house on the heights: a white stone façade, an arcade of horseshoe arches, wrought-iron balconies, and at its centre a patio planted with an orange tree.
1930
The parties of the Chandelier Hall
The great hall on the garden level hosts the weddings of the family and the neighbours. People dance under six crystal chandeliers; the Andalusian orchestra plays until dawn.
1978
The office years
The house becomes offices. The salons are partitioned, the cement tiles covered with linoleum, the mouldings forgotten under paint. The orange tree keeps flowering.
2019
The restoration
Three years of work with Algerian craftsmen: the mouldings recorded one by one, four thousand tiles lifted and relaid, the cedar doors restored, the chandeliers cleaned drop by drop.
2022
The candle lit again
The house opens as a hotel, with its tables, its salons and its roof over the bay. On the first evening, a candle is lit in the top-floor window.
The restoration
Three years of work, a craftsman for every trade: the stonemasons of the façade, the ironworkers of the balconies, the tilers who found the patterns of the cement tiles again, the joiners who remade the cedar doors exactly as they were.
Photo: Youssefbensaad, CC BY-SA 4.0 (source)
The house is waiting for you
This story is invented, like the house itself: a demonstration.