Asilah

The site is old: Phoenician traders used this stretch of the Atlantic coast, and a settlement known to the Carthaginians and the Romans stood here, linked to the larger town of Lixus down the coast. In the 10th century it was controlled from Córdoba, and it later passed through Almoravid, Almohad and Marinid hands as a small port shipping grain from the plain behind it.

Portugal took Asilah in 1471 and rebuilt the walls, bastions and gates that still enclose the medina. It was from here that King Sebastian of Portugal set out in 1578 on the campaign that ended at the Battle of the Three Kings near Ksar el-Kébir, where he was killed and his army destroyed. Spain held the town for a period after the union of the Iberian crowns, and it was retaken for Morocco in 1692 by Moulay Ismail, after which it lived on fishing, farming and, at times, piracy.

At the turn of the 20th century Asilah was the base of Ahmed al-Raisuni, a sharif and bandit chief who kidnapped foreigners for ransom, held official posts and built a palace on the sea wall. The town then spent the protectorate decades inside the Spanish zone and declined quietly after independence. Its revival dates from 1978, when the mayor, Mohamed Benaissa, and the painter Mohamed Melehi founded a cultural festival that invited artists to paint the medina walls each summer; the whitewashing and repainting have continued since, the old town has been restored, and tourism now shapes the place.

For a town of its size Asilah has an unusual cultural life. The summer festival founded in 1978 brings painters, sculptors, poets and musicians from Morocco, the Arab world, Africa, Europe and Latin America, and its most visible result is the murals painted directly onto the whitewashed walls of the medina. Galleries, workshops and a cultural centre operate through the year, and residents are used to artists working in the street.

Everyday life remains that of a small northern Moroccan town. Spanish is widely understood, a legacy of the decades in the Spanish zone, and Spanish football and television have a following. The people of the surrounding plain and hills come in for the weekly souk, and the Jbala culture of the hinterland — its dialect, sung poetry and women's striped cloth wraps — is visible on market days.

Religious practice is steady and public life modest: the mosque sets the rhythm of the day, Ramadan reshapes the year, and drinking is not part of the town's social habits. Fishing gives the place much of its character, with boats worked from the beach and the harbour and the catch sold directly. Evening belongs to the ramparts, where families and visitors alike walk out to watch the sun drop into the Atlantic.

About 30,000 people live in Asilah, which makes it a small town whose population swells several times over in July and August. Most residents live outside the walls in the newer streets, while the medina has filled with guesthouses, galleries and holiday homes, some owned by Moroccans from the cities and by Europeans.

Fishing, farming on the coastal plain and tourism carry the economy, alongside work in Tangier, which is close enough to commute to by train or shared taxi and has drawn many young people to its factories and port. The summer season and the festival provide a concentrated burst of income for guesthouses, cafés and traders, and the winter is correspondingly quiet, with shuttered shops and empty beaches.

The rhythm is small-town and tied to the sea and the season: boats out early, the market busy in the morning, a long afternoon pause, and evening walks on the ramparts and the promenade. Emigration is a constant thread, with families in Spain and the Netherlands returning each summer by ferry, and the pressure of holiday building along the coast and the reliability of water supply after dry years are among the town's recurring concerns.

Asilah eats what the boats bring in. Sardines grilled over charcoal are the everyday fish, with sole, sea bass, bream, squid and prawns at the grills near the walls, and fish tagines cooked with potatoes, tomatoes and peppers under the garlic-and-coriander marinade called chermoula. Fried fish sold in paper is the standard cheap lunch, eaten with bread and a wedge of lemon.

Beyond the sea the food is northern Moroccan. Bissara, a thick purée of dried fava beans dressed with olive oil, cumin and paprika, is the cheap breakfast; harira soup and brochettes fill the counters near the market; and jben, the fresh white cheese of the Jbala hills, is sold with honey and olives. Bread comes round and flat as khobz, with msemen and baghrir fried and griddled in the morning.

Sweets follow the Andalusian pattern of almonds, honey and sesame — ghriba biscuits, crescent-shaped kaab el ghzal, and chebakia during Ramadan. Mint tea is poured at every occasion and coffee is drunk strong, often as nous-nous, half coffee and half milk. Fresh orange juice is sold from carts, and figs, melons and prickly pears come from the plain behind the town in season.