It is located in a sickle-shaped bay protected from the swell of offshore winds (northwest facing) by the advance of Cape Carbon (to the west of the city).

[1] On a micro-regional scale, Béjaïa is the outlet of a central Algeria, going from Algiers to Skikda, the spillway of the Highlands and a supply port for two million people.

These topographical constraints mean that, despite its strong dynamism, the city sees part of the trade escape it in its eastern and western areas of influence.

Other nearby scenic spots include the Aiguades beach and the Pic des Singes (Peak of the Monkeys); the latter site is a habitat for the endangered Barbary macaque, which prehistorically had a much broader distribution than at present.

This Berber name — which would have originally been Tabgayet, but whose initial t marking the feminine gender would have fallen into disuse — would come from the words tabegga, tabeɣayt, meaning "wild brambles and blackberries".

[4] In medieval Romance languages, Bugaya (from Arabic Bugāya; in Spanish Bujía and in Italian Bugía[5] is the name given to the city, which supplied a large quantity of beeswax for the manufacture of candles.

Gradually it came to refer to the wax that was imported in the Middle Ages for the manufacture of candles in Europe; they are from then on commonly designated in French by the word "bougie".

In addition to the Soummam River, which sufficiently meets agricultural needs in the surroundings of the city, Béjaïa is located in the maritime Kabylie and benefits from a fairly favorable rainfall compared to the rest of the country.

[10] The city of Béjaïa is linked to Algiers, Tizi Ouzou, Bouira, Sétif, Jijel and several Kabyle localities by an important road network.

Bus lines connect it to the cities of the Algerian south, including Hassi Messaoud, Ouargla, Ghardaïa, Laghouat, Djelfa and Bou Saâda.

From the 1st century, the revolt of Tacfarinas involved all the Numidian populations of the region; he invested the Soummam valley, took Tiklat and reached Saldae.

An unlikely hypothesis would have it that the name Béjaïa comes from this period from the Arabic word بقاية (Baqâyâ: "the remains, the survivors") because it would have served as a fallback for the Christian and Jewish populations of Constantine and Sétif.

Several hypotheses supported by local traditions explain this state: the city would have experienced 7 earthquakes or a similar number of enemy attacks.

[21] Before acquiring its status as capital, the city experienced remarkable dynamism, particularly on the cultural level; it was in fact the port at the crossroads of the Qal'a of Banu Hammad, and Al Andalus.

[38][39] The city exported beeswax and skins in quantity, tannic barks for working leather (the iscorzia di Bugiea was famous in the 14th century), alum, cereals, raisins, wool and cotton from Biskra and M'sila, metals and pottery.

[41] The Hammadid fleet [fr] played an important role in the western Mediterranean; it slowed down European advances, particularly those of the Normans of Sicily in the 12th century.

Jews and Christians benefited from favorable conditions; the Emir An Nasir maintained regular correspondence with Pope Gregory VII[42] and asked him to appoint a bishop for his city.

[43] The arrival of scholars made Béjaïa a leading city in the field of science; its influence extended beyond the Mediterranean and reached Europe.

The main places of medieval knowledge were the Great Mosque, Madinat al-`Ilm (the City of Sciences), the Khizana Sultaniya and the Sidi Touati Institute.

[39][49] At that time the city had developed so much that, according to Leo Africanus, it was populated by several tens of thousands of people from all over the Maghreb, the Levant, Europe and Asia.

The spirit of the Inquisition influenced local Spanish politics, the Jews were driven out of the city and the urban elites, including the scholars, fled.

[60][61] It was at this time, when the old states were in decline, that the Barbarossa brothers, Greek corsairs converted to Islam, appeared and settled in the neighboring city of Jijel.

They eventually founded their own state around Algiers, based partly on corsair activity, and rapidly extended their influence over northern Algeria by gradually entering the Ottoman orbit and presenting themselves in the eyes of the population as direct competitors of the Spanish.

The inhabitants maintained a small merchant fleet of about twenty feluccas which traded with Algiers, Oran, Bouna and Tunis to export the region's produce during favorable weather.

In 1906, the Cape Carbon lighthouse was built, it is the highest in the world due to its natural location (altitude 220 meters) and it has a range of 33 miles.

[76] During World War II, Operation Torch landed forces in North Africa, including a battalion of the British Royal West Kent Regiment at Béjaïa on 11 November 1942.

[77] On May 8, 1945, the repression led by the French colonial forces in Kherrata, where the navy was used for a naval bombardment of the coasts of the Béjaïa region, caused thousands of victims.

[78] During the Algerian War of Independence, the organization of the FLN and the ALN created for the first time a Kabyle administrative territory, the wilaya III; Béjaïa is part of this group.

[28] The Soummam congress, which is the political meeting of the FLN which sets the political-military line of the Algerian national movement in the war, takes place in Ouzellaguen, in the Bougiote hinterland.

In the early 1990s, the increase in population combined with the lack of planning and the inadequacy of public policies degraded the living environment of the city, despite certain assets for its future.