Constantine is a city of eastern Algeria built on a dramatic limestone plateau encircled on three sides by the deep gorge of the Rhumel river. The site has been continuously inhabited since at least the early first millennium BCE; under the Numidian kings it was Cirta, the principal capital of Massinissa and the largest Berber royal city of antiquity.
The Roman renaming to Constantina dates from 313 CE, after Constantine I rebuilt the city following its destruction in the wars of the Tetrarchy. Successive Vandal, Byzantine, Hammadid, and Hafsid administrations followed; the city retained its political weight under the Ottoman Beylik of the East, of which it was the capital from the early seventeenth century until French conquest in 1837.
The Constantinois — the broader region around the city — is the historic heartland of the Chaoui Berber sphere, although the city itself has been overwhelmingly Arabic-speaking since the medieval period. Constantine is the regional capital for the Aurès massif to its south.
The five bridges of Constantine — the Roman Pont d'El-Kantara, the Ottoman Mellah Slimane, the colonial Sidi M'Cid suspension bridge of 1912, the Sidi Rached arched viaduct of 1912, and the contemporary Salah Bey cable-stayed bridge of 2014 — span the gorge at heights up to 175 metres and are the city's defining urban image.