Seven kilometres from Khenchela, the road reaches El Hamma and a spring whose history stretches back to Roman North Africa. Hammam Essalihine is a rare kind of archaeological encounter: water remains central to the place rather than surviving only as a channel on an excavator’s plan. The visitor meets a working thermal station beside protected remains. That distinction matters. The old basins tell one story; the contemporary bathing facilities tell another, connected story.
The Algerian tourism ministry locates the station in a wooded landscape at the edge of the Aurès. Its description places Roman use at the beginning of the site’s documented history and identifies a restored circular Roman pool. The Khenchela Directorate of Culture records the protected archaeological bath as two basins and associated rooms under its Latin name, Aquae Flavianae. The ministry describes five pools in the wider station, alongside bathing cabins. Two historic basins and five station pools are therefore different counts, not competing measurements of the same enclosure.
