A Pilgrimage Back to Peace Tipasa is a ruined Roman city. It sits forty miles west of Algiers, atop cliffs overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. It is a place, sacred to the author, who wandered there as a young man through its ancient overgrown architecture. “Return to Tipasa” , the essay by Albert Camus , follows the author’s thoughts and feelings as he revisits the city after the Second World War. He is not the same man that had experienced its beauty before. His once uncorrupted perspective has been robbed of him, he is jaded. He longs to see and feel as he used to be able. He returns to this magical place, Tipasa , that is a monument for him to the purity and strength within that he longs to regain. The city itself stands as metaphor for what once was beautiful, for what has fallen, and for what has since been made beautiful again, with the help of nature’s encroachment and viewed through the lens of the innocence of youth. After lifetimes of pain and separation, through the