Got Your archeologist’s cap on? Today we invite you to touch down in Algeria and explore Timgad, a lost Roman city on the edge of the Sahara desert that remained hidden beneath the sand for nearly a thousand years.

Positively obscure compared to the international notoriety of Pompeii, this ancient city is nonetheless one of the best surviving examples of Roman town planning anywhere in the historical Empire.

No one believed the first 18th century European explorer who claimed to have found a Roman city poking out of the sand in the North African desert, and the full extent of the 50-hectare site wouldn’t be realised and excavated in its entirety until the 1950s. Rome is still well worth the visit, but it’s in Algeria that some of the most impressive Roman remains in the whole world are to be found…

Timgad photographed by Brian Brake for LIFE magazine, 1965

The first thing you might be thinking when looking at these aerial photographs is that our modern grid design for cities is not so modern after all.

Long before New York City had its “grid” street system, Timgad was designed with an orthogonal grid which is lined by a partially restored Corinthian colonnade, magnificently visible from above. And it’s the oldest of its kind in the world.

Timgad photographed by Brian Brake for LIFE magazine, 1965

Originally founded by Emperor Trajan in 100 AD and built as a retirement colony for soldiers living nearby, within a few generations of its birth, the outpost had expanded to over 10,000 residents of both Roman, African, as well as Berber descent.

Most of them would likely never even have seen Rome before, but Timgad invested heavily in high culture and Roman identity, despite being thousands of kilometers from the Italian city itself.

Timgad photographed by Brian Brake for LIFE magazine, 1965

The extension of Roman citizenship to non-Romans was a carefully planned strategy of the Empire – it knew it worked better by bringing people in than by keeping them out. In return for their loyalty, local elites were given a stake in the great and powerful Empire, and benefitted from its protection and legal system, not to mention, its modern urban amenities such as Roman bath houses, theatres, and a fancy public library…

Timgad photographed by Brian Brake for LIFE magazine, 1965

Timgad, also known as Thamugadi in old Berber, is home to a very rare example of a surviving public library from the Roman world. Built in the 2nd century, the library would have housed manuscripts relating to religion, military history and good governance.

An artist’s interpretation of the Timgad library

These would have been rolled up and stored in wooden scroll cases, placed in shelves separated by ornate columns. The shelves can still be seen standing in the midst of the town ruins, today a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a monument to culture.

Mosaic found in Timgad

The remains of as many as 14 baths have survived and a mosaic portraying Roman flip-flops was found at the entrance of a house in Timgad dating back to the 1st or 2nd century, with the inscription “BENE LAVA” which translates to ‘wash well’. This mosaic, along with a collection of more than 200 others found in Timgad, are held inside a museum at the entrance of the site.

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