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This miniature view of Algiers was first issued at Venice in 1572 by the Dalmatian-born engraver Martinus Rota (Šibenik, ca. 1520 – Vienna, 1583). The image presents a bird’s-eye view of Algiers as newly fortified in the wake of the Battle of Lepanto in 1571. A second edition was issued by Francesco Valegio’s in 1595.
The vantage is from the south-southeast, across the “Mare Libicum Mediterraneo,” with two galleys and a tartane in the foreground. Fortified defensive walls enclose town, punctuated by slender minarets and a centrally placed Great Mosque (letter R in the keyed legend). At the lower right, a newly engineered, bastioned mole protects the harbor mouth; ravelins and angled walls attest to the recent adoption of trace-italienne principles. Outside the walls, terraced gardens, aqueduct arches, and suburban forts (notably the star-shaped redoubt on the ridge to the northwest) command the approaches. Includes a key, engraved along the bottom margin, identifying city gates, markets, mosques, and shore batteries, underscoring both civic hierarchy and defensive preparedness.
Algiers had risen from a corsair stronghold to the most formidable Ottoman base in the western Mediterranean after Hayreddin Barbarossa entrenched Ottoman suzerainty in 1516-18. Charles V’s catastrophic expedition of 1541 exposed the city’s vulnerabilities, prompting sustained Ottoman investment in modern fortification. Rota’s 1572 engraving—dated to the year after Lepanto—captures these upgrades at the very moment when Christian Europe was assessing Ottoman naval power and coastal defenses.
The plate identifies “Martinus Rota Sibenicensi formis 1572” at lower right.
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