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Morocco

7 city guides · Africa

Cities in Morocco (7)

Africa
🇲🇦 Morocco

Agadir

Agadir (population 700,000 — the capital of the Souss-Massa region, the Atlantic coast of southern Morocco, 480km south of Casablanca) is the most different city in Morocco from the rest of the Moroccan urban tradition: rebuilt entirely after the catastrophic earthquake of February 29, 1960 (the Agadir earthquake — magnitude 5.7–5.9, depth approximately 15km below the surface directly beneath the city: the earthquake struck at 23:40 (near midnight, when most residents were asleep in their beds) and lasted 15 seconds: it destroyed 70% of the buildings in the city and killed approximately 15,000 people out of a population of 30,000 — a 50% mortality rate making it the most lethal earthquake in Moroccan history and one of the most lethal in 20th-century African history), Agadir lacks the medinas, the riads, the souks and the Islamic architecture that define all other Moroccan cities. Instead, it is Morocco's purpose-built beach resort city: the 10km crescent of Atlantic beach (the Baie d'Agadir — one of the most protected and safe Atlantic swimming beaches in Morocco: the bay faces southwest, sheltered from the Atlantic swell by the Agadir headland, producing calm, predictable waves perfect for beginner surfers and family swimming), the wide beach promenade (the Corniche — the 5km seaside boulevard), the modern souks (the Souk El Had (the largest market in southern Morocco), the Souk de l'Artisanat (the craft market)), and access to some of the most important natural and cultural landscapes in Morocco: the Souss-Massa National Park (the last refuge of the critically endangered northern bald ibis), Taroudant (the "little Marrakech" — the medieval walled city 85km inland), the pre-Saharan Anti-Atlas mountains, and the argan oil forests (the argan tree (Argania spinosa) is endemic to the Souss region and the Moroccan coast — the argan oil (extracted from the argan nut) is the most valuable food oil in the world per liter, used in Moroccan cuisine (the amlou dip — argan oil mixed with honey and almonds) and in the global cosmetics industry (the "liquid gold of Morocco")).

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🇲🇦 Morocco

Casablanca

Casablanca (الدار البيضاء — Ad-Dār al-Bayḍāʾ, "The White House" in Arabic — population 3.75 million in the city, 5.1 million in the Grand Casablanca region — the economic capital of Morocco and the largest city in the Maghreb) is the city that the world knows from the Humphrey Bogart film but has little to do with it (the film (1942) was entirely shot in Hollywood: there is no "Rick's Café" in the real Casablanca — or rather there is now, a 2004 reconstruction built for tourists). The real Casablanca is the most modern, most industrialized and most economically powerful city in Morocco: the commercial and financial capital (70% of Morocco's industrial production is in the Grand Casablanca region), the largest port in Africa by container traffic, and the city that has the most remarkable modern architecture in the Maghreb: the Hassan II Mosque (1993 — the largest mosque in Africa and the 7th-largest in the world, built on a promontory extending over the Atlantic Ocean, with the world's tallest minaret (210m), the retractable roof and the glass floor through which the Atlantic is visible during prayers), the Art Deco downtown (the most concentrated collection of 1920s–1940s Art Deco architecture outside Miami — the Marché Central, the Villa des Arts and the entire grid of the Ville Nouvelle (New City) built by the French Protectorate), and the Quartier des Habous (the New Medina — the 1930s French colonial construction of a new medina in the traditional Moroccan style, built to house the rural migrants arriving in the industrial city).

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🇲🇦 Morocco

Chefchaouen

Chefchaouen (population 45,000) — the "Blue City" — is the most photogenic and the most internationally famous small town in Morocco: the entire medina (the old walled city) is painted in the most extraordinary shades of blue (from the palest powder blue to the most intense cobalt and indigo) that make Chefchaouen the most recognizable city image in North Africa and one of the most photographed urban landscapes in the world. Founded in 1471 by the Moorish exile Moulay Ali ibn Rachid (a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad) as a stronghold against the Portuguese invasions of northern Morocco, the town served as a refuge for the Muslims and the Jews expelled from Spain in 1492 (the most dramatic forced migration in Spanish history: the Alhambra Decree that expelled all Jews and the subsequent forced conversion of Muslims). The blue painting tradition (the most important aesthetic phenomenon in Chefchaouen: the origins of the blue are debated — the most widely accepted explanations are either the Jewish community's tradition of painting blue to represent the sky and heaven, or the Moorish tradition of using indigo to repel mosquitoes). The town sits in the Rif Mountains (the most beautiful mountain range in Morocco) above a valley of the Oued Laou river, and the surrounding Talassemtane National Park offers the most important cedar forest and trekking in northern Morocco.

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🇲🇦 Morocco

Fes

Fes (population 1.2 million — "Fez" in older transliteration) is the most perfectly medieval single city in the world and the most comprehensively intact ancient medina in the entire Arab world — UNESCO World Heritage since 1981. The Fes el-Bali (the Old Medina — the most precisely old-city-named single ancient medina: the most completely car-free and the most maze-like single medieval city in Africa with 9,000+ streets/lanes in 3km²). The Al-Qarawiyyin University (the most continuously operating single university in the world — founded 859 CE by Fatima al-Fihri: the most precisely 859-AD single continuous-university-founding in the history of higher education — the world's oldest university still in operation). The Bou Inania Madrasa (the most impressively carved-plaster-and-cedar-wood-decorated single Moroccan religious school), the Chouara Tannery (the most dramatically colourful and the most photographically iconic single urban tanning operation in Africa: the most open-rooftop-visible single leather dyeing process — the most pungent-smell-warning-requiring single tourist attraction in North Africa), and the Medersa Attarine (the most finely Moorish-zellige-tile single Islamic school interior in Morocco).

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🇲🇦 Morocco

Marrakech

Marrakech (the "Red City" — al-Hamra — named for the terracotta sandstone of its walls and buildings) is one of the great sensory experiences on earth: a city of 1 million in the foothills of the Atlas Mountains where the 11th-century Medina (the walled old city, UNESCO) is still the pulsing heart of daily life — the souks (covered markets with artisans working in the same trades for centuries), the Djemaa el-Fna (the main square that transforms from market to open-air carnival every evening), the riad courtyards hidden behind blank Medina walls, and the palaces of the Saadian sultans. Morocco's cultural capital sits at the crossroads of Amazigh (Berber), Arab, Andalusian and sub-Saharan Africa — and three days is barely enough to scratch the surface of a city where you can get genuinely, pleasurably lost.

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🇲🇦 Morocco

Rabat

Rabat is Morocco's capital — the quietest, most elegant and least touristy of Morocco's four imperial cities. While Marrakesh draws the crowds and Fez has the most labyrinthine medina, Rabat has the finest Almohad architecture (the Hassan Tower and the Kasbah des Oudaïas), a beautifully preserved colonial-era Ville Nouvelle (planned by Henri Prost under the French Protectorate), the most atmospheric necropolis in Morocco (the Chellah), and the best-value museums in the country. Across the Bouregreg River estuary, the sister city of Salé adds a more traditional Moroccan counterpoint.

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🇲🇦 Morocco

Tangier

Tangier (Tanja in Arabic, Tánger in Spanish) is Morocco's northernmost major city (population 1 million), on the Strait of Gibraltar at the precise point where the Atlantic Ocean meets the Mediterranean Sea — 14 km across the water from the Spanish coast at Tarifa, making it the closest point between Africa and Europe and the meeting point of two continents, two oceans, and (in the 20th century) the most concentrated intersection of cultures in the world. Tangier's defining historical period was the International Zone (1923-1956): under the Convention of Paris (1923), Tangier was excluded from the French and Spanish Protectorates of Morocco and governed by an international committee of European powers (France, Spain, Britain, Portugal, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and later Sweden and the United States) with its own separate laws, no import duties and no income taxes. The International Zone attracted a cosmopolitan population of diplomats, artists, writers, spies, smugglers, tax exiles and exiles of all kinds — the most permissive jurisdiction in the Western world for 33 years. The American and European expatriate literary colony that settled in Tangier in the International Zone period and its aftermath produced the most concentrated literary output of any expatriate community since the Paris of the 1920s: Paul Bowles (author of "The Sheltering Sky", 1949 — the defining Tangier novel; Bowles lived in Tangier from 1947 until his death in 1999); William S. Burroughs (wrote "Naked Lunch" in Tangier 1955-1958); Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote and Francis Bacon all spent significant time in Tangier in the 1950s-60s; the Rolling Stones recorded in Tangier. The Cap Spartel (the westernmost point of the African continent, where the Atlantic meets the Mediterranean, 14 km west of Tangier) and the Caves of Hercules (the sea cave carved by neolithic people and the Atlantic wave action, with the famous Africa-shaped opening facing the ocean) are the most dramatic natural landmarks in the Tangier region.

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