My trip to santa cruz , Oran

hello everyone 

welcome to another post about Algeria , last post was about some places that i visited in 2 different cities , Algiers and Blida , you can check the post here .

this post will be about 2 historical places in Oran : the fort and the chapel of santa cruz .

the fort of santa cruz was built in the16th century by Spaniards who have ruled Oran for like 300 years till 1972  . it is located on mount Murdajdo . there isn't only this fort on the site , there is 2 others but not accessible , one of them was built by the Ottomas  .

if you want to enter to the fort , you need first to pass by 4 or 5 of this thing i will call them stairs , and believe me it's so exhausting i thought i will not reach  to the top especially that we went in summer time and the weather was so hot .

here's some pictures 

on the top you can have an overview of Oran and the port of Mers alkabir 

the chapel is in front of the fort  , you can also see an overview of the city from there . in the chapel there was a room where christian pray but it was closed , you can only see what there is inside from a small window , i took this picture from the internet . 

there is different story of why the chapel was built and this is one of them:
in 1849 there was a cholera epidemic in Oran which cause a major catastrophe , people didn't have a lot to do to face this mortal disease so they asked for the blessing of virgin Mariam after that the rain fell the , town was saved from this disease and to show how much they are thankful to God they decided to build the chapel in 1850 .
and in 1873 the statue of virgin Mariam has been added at the top of the chapel , which said to be a replica of that at " Notre Dame " in Marseilles . the statue was made in Lyon , France