Explore the real-world places that appear in The First Man by Albert Camus. Each location on the map shows what happens there in the novel, the real history of the place, and what's there today. Featured locations include Belcourt (Rue de Lyon) Family Apartment, Belcourt Neighborhood Streets, Lycée Bugeaud (Lycée Emir Abdelkader), Monsieur Bernard's Primary School Classroom, Bay of Algiers and the Sea at Sidi Ferruch and 7 more.
Rue de Lyon, Belcourt — Jacques Cormery's childhood home
Jacques Cormery grows up in a cramped, poor apartment in Belcourt with his silent, nearly deaf mother, his domineering grandmother, and his uncle Ernest. The flat has no running water, and the toilet is on the landing. The household is ruled by the grandmother's strictness, and the family lives without books or newspapers. Jacques's love for his mother is wordless and fierce.
Belcourt, now Belouizdad, was a working-class district of Algiers populated by French, Spanish, Maltese and other European settlers and Algerians. Albert Camus was born in Mondovi but grew up at 93 Rue de Lyon in this neighborhood from 1914 onward. Housing was crowded and basic through the early 20th century.
The district is now called Belouizdad, a dense urban neighborhood. The Rue de Lyon is now Rue Belouizdad, and the building remains a residential address. Visitors may see it from the street but it is not open to the public.
Belcourt — Where Jacques plays soccer and roams with friends
Jacques and his friends play soccer in the streets, wearing out their shoes and angering his grandmother, who beats him for it. The streets are a world of poverty, heat, and joyful freedom. Camus renders the neighborhood's sensory life of sun, dust, and cheap food as the foundation of Jacques's sense of self.
Belcourt's streets were a mix of tramlines, small shops and workshops. Camus, a talented goalkeeper in his youth, later credited football with teaching him about loyalty and morality.
The streets are busy with traffic, markets and shops. The neighborhood retains its dense colonial-era urban fabric, with arcaded buildings and street life.
Hills above Algiers — Jacques's scholarship to secondary school
With the help of his teacher, Monsieur Bernard, Jacques wins a scholarship to the lycée. The move takes him away from his illiterate family's world and into a bourgeois one, bringing both opportunity and a quiet sense of estrangement. His grandmother and mother cannot fully understand what he is entering, and he begins to feel the gap between worlds.
Lycée Bugeaud was a prestigious colonial-era secondary school in Algiers that Camus attended on scholarship from 1924. It was renamed Lycée Emir Abdelkader after Algerian independence.
The school continues to operate as a public secondary school. It is an active educational institution and not open for general visits.
Belcourt — The teacher who changed Jacques's life
Monsieur Bernard, a dedicated teacher, recognizes Jacques's potential and gives him extra lessons after school. He persuades the grandmother to let Jacques take the scholarship exam. Bernard treats his pupils with dignity and opens the world of books and ideas to Jacques, who later feels lasting gratitude. The novel's dedication-like gesture toward the teacher reflects Camus's real teacher, Louis Germain.
Camus's real teacher, Louis Germain, taught at the Belcourt primary school on Rue Aumerat. Camus wrote to Germain after receiving the Nobel Prize in 1957, thanking him.
Belcourt's school buildings remain in use in the neighborhood. The school is a working institution and not a tourist site.
Mediterranean coast — Swimming, sun, and freedom
Jacques and his friends escape the oppressive city to swim in the sea and bask in the sun. The sea represents an ecstatic, physical freedom that poverty cannot take from him. These scenes echo Camus's lyrical essays and give the novel its sensual counterweight to hardship.
Sidi Ferruch (Sidi Fredj) is where French forces landed in 1830 to begin the conquest of Algeria. It later became a seaside resort for Algiers residents.
Sidi Fredj is a coastal resort area with a marina, hotels and beaches. It is popular for leisure and has a monument related to the 1830 landing.
Visit: Sidi Fredj Marina and Beach (park)
Coast west of Algiers — Camus's spiritual landscape
Though Tipasa is more central to Camus's essays, it forms part of the Algerian landscape of sun, ruins, and sea that shapes Jacques's sensibility. The novel's evocation of light and the sea draws on the same experience of nature and antiquity as a source of meaning.
Tipasa was a Phoenician trading post and later a Roman colony, with remains from the Roman and Christian periods. It was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1982.
The archaeological park of Tipasa is open to visitors and overlooks the Mediterranean. It is a major tourist site near Algiers.
Visit: Tipasa Archaeological Park (historic site)
Brittany, France — Jacques visits his father's grave
Jacques, now forty, visits the grave of his father, Henri Cormery, killed at the Battle of the Marne in 1914. He realizes with shock that he is older than his father ever was. This moment launches his search for the father he never knew and for his own origins.
Camus's father, Lucien Camus, was killed in World War I in 1914 and is buried in Saint-Brieuc, Brittany. Camus visited the grave in 1946, an experience that inspired this scene.
The grave is in the Saint-Brieuc municipal cemetery, where visitors can pay respects. It is a quiet public cemetery.
Visit: Saint-Brieuc Cemetery (Cimetière de Saint-Brieuc) (landmark)
Eastern Algeria — The Cormery family's origins
Jacques travels to Saint-Apôtre and Solférino, the colonial farming region where his father was born and worked on a vineyard estate. He searches for traces of his family among the settler community, finding little memory of his father. The journey reveals the hardships of the settlers and the erasure of the poor from history.
Mondovi, now Dréan, was founded in 1848 as a colonial agricultural settlement near Annaba in eastern Algeria. Albert Camus was born there in 1913 while his father worked at a wine estate.
Dréan is a small town in El Tarf Province in northeastern Algeria. It is an ordinary town with no major tourist infrastructure for Camus.
Heights of Algiers — Basilica overlooking the bay
Algiers' religious and colonial landscape forms part of the backdrop of Jacques's youth. The basilica high above the bay symbolizes a Catholic and European presence in a mostly Muslim land, one that Jacques's secular, poor family seldom engaged with.
The basilica was built between 1858 and 1872 in Romano-Byzantine style. It is known for its inscription asking the Virgin to pray for Christians and Muslims.
Notre-Dame d'Afrique remains an active church and a landmark visited by tourists for its views of the bay. It is a recognized site in Algiers.
Visit: Basilique Notre-Dame d'Afrique (landmark)
Old city — The Arab world beside the European quarter
The Casbah represents the Arab and Berber world that lived alongside the poor French settlers of Jacques's world. Camus portrays a coexistence marked by silence, shared poverty, and unspoken tension, with Arab neighbors present throughout Jacques's youth.
The Casbah is the old Ottoman citadel quarter of Algiers, with origins in the 16th century. It was a center of resistance during the Algerian War of Independence and was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1992.
The Casbah is a historic residential quarter with narrow streets, old houses and mosques. Parts are in disrepair, but it is visited by tourists and restoration efforts continue.
Visit: Casbah of Algiers (historic site)
Harbor — Gateway between Algeria and France
The port is where Jacques's journeys between Algeria and France begin and end. It anchors the novel's themes of migration, rootlessness, and return, as Jacques crosses the sea to find his father's grave and revisit his origins.
The Port of Algiers has been a major Mediterranean harbor since antiquity and served as the main link between colonial Algeria and metropolitan France. It remains Algeria's principal port.
The port is a working commercial harbor and a major hub for trade and passenger traffic. Visitors can view it from the waterfront promenade.
Hamma district — Algiers's great botanical garden
The warm, lush landscape of Algiers, including the gardens near Belcourt, offers Jacques moments of beauty and rest from poverty. Such places embody the Mediterranean sensuality that Camus held as a counterpoint to suffering.
The garden was established in 1832 as an acclimatization garden for experimental plants and opened to the public. It covers about 32 hectares and has long been a site for leisure and science.
The Jardin d'Essai du Hamma is a botanical garden open to the public, with tree-lined avenues and rare species. It is a popular spot for walks in Algiers.
Visit: Jardin d'Essai du Hamma (park)
More by Albert Camus: The Stranger locations map · The Plague locations map · L'Étranger locations map · All Albert Camus books
Other nearby maps: Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian locations map · The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón locations map · The Angel's Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafón locations map