Marrakech

Marrakech was founded around 1070 by the Almoravids, Sanhaja Amazigh tribesmen from the Sahara, as a camp and then a capital on the caravan route between the desert and the Atlantic plains; the country's European name derives from the city's. Under Ali ibn Yusuf it gained walls, mosques and the underground khettara channels that still water its gardens. In 1147 the Almohads, whose movement began in the High Atlas village of Tinmel, took the city, destroyed much of what stood and rebuilt it, raising the Koutoubia mosque and laying out the Agdal and Menara gardens.

Power later moved north to Fez under the Marinids, and Marrakech declined until the Saadians made it their capital in the 16th century. Ahmad al-Mansur, enriched by the conquest of the Songhai empire, built the El Badi palace in 1578, and the dynasty's rulers were buried in the tombs behind the kasbah mosque. Sultan Moulay Ismail later moved the capital to Meknes and had El Badi stripped for his own building works; the Saadian tombs were sealed and forgotten until 1917.

In the 19th century viziers built the courtyard palaces of the Bahia and Dar Si Said. Under the French protectorate the pasha Thami El Glaoui ruled the city and much of the south on France's behalf, and the new town of Gueliz rose outside the walls. Since the 1990s the city has become one of Africa's leading tourist destinations, with the medina's riads converted into guesthouses. On 8 September 2023 an earthquake centred in Al Haouz province, in the mountains south-west of the city, killed nearly 3,000 people and destroyed many villages of the High Atlas; in Marrakech parts of the old city walls and a minaret of the Kharboush mosque on Jemaa el-Fnaa collapsed.

Marrakech is where the Arab city and the Amazigh south meet. Tashelhit is heard in the souks beside Darija, the surrounding countryside is Amazigh, and much of the city's workforce comes down from the mountains. Jemaa el-Fnaa is the clearest expression of that mixture: a square where storytellers, Gnawa musicians, acrobats, herbalists and snake charmers have worked for centuries, recognised by UNESCO in 2001 as a masterpiece of the oral and intangible heritage of humanity, and the place where the city assembles each evening.

Craft is the other defining tradition. The souks are organised by trade, so dyers, tanners, slipper makers, coppersmiths, carpenters and carpet dealers each have their own lanes, and apprenticeship still runs through families. The red buildings that give the city its nickname come from pisé, rammed earth mixed with lime, and the decorative vocabulary of zellij tile, carved plaster and painted cedar is visible in every palace and riad.

Since the 1960s Marrakech has also been an international city, drawn on by designers, film-makers and hoteliers, and the medina's riads and the hotels of Hivernage bring a cosmopolitan layer that sits oddly against the working neighbourhoods around them. Locals are used to visitors and to hard bargaining; the manners that matter are the ordinary Moroccan ones — greetings before business, tea accepted, modesty in dress in the old quarters — and the city's football club, the Kawkab, remains a point of civic pride.

Marrakech had about 930,000 people at the 2014 census, making it Morocco's fourth largest city, and the population has grown quickly as families have arrived from the Haouz plain and the mountains. The medina remains densely inhabited, though rising property prices and the conversion of houses into guesthouses have pushed many families out to the districts beyond the walls, where most of the city now lives.

Tourism underpins the economy, employing people in hotels, riads, restaurants, guiding and transport, alongside crafts, construction, a growing conference and film-making business and the trade that serves the agricultural plain. The imbalance is well understood locally: the work is seasonal, much of it informal, and the difference between the walled city's guesthouses and the outer neighbourhoods is stark.

The day begins early with bread and deliveries, slows in the afternoon heat, and reopens in the evening when Jemaa el-Fnaa fills and the cafés of Gueliz put out their chairs. Water is the pressing issue: after successive dry years the Haouz plain and the reservoirs that supply the city have been badly depleted, and public fountains, gardens and hammams have all felt restrictions. Recovery from the 2023 earthquake continues in the mountain villages south of the city, with many families still waiting for rebuilt homes.

Marrakech's own dish is tanjia — beef or lamb, preserved lemon, garlic, cumin and smen sealed in a tall clay urn and left for hours in the embers of a hammam furnace, traditionally a meal cooked by men. Mechoui, whole lamb slow-roasted in an earthen pit oven and sold by weight with bread, salt and cumin, is the other local speciality, sold in a lane off Jemaa el-Fnaa. Tagines follow the national repertoire: lamb with prunes and almonds, chicken with preserved lemon and olives, kefta with eggs.

The evening stalls of Jemaa el-Fnaa are a cuisine in themselves — harira, the tomato, lentil and chickpea soup; babbouche, snails in a peppery broth; grilled merguez and brochettes; fried fish; sheep's head and stewed offal; and stalls selling only khoudenjal, a hot ginger and galangal drink with spiced cake. Pastilla, the sweet-savoury pie of pigeon or chicken with almonds and cinnamon in paper-thin warqa pastry, appears at celebrations, and seffa, sweetened steamed vermicelli or couscous with cinnamon and icing sugar, closes a feast.

Bread anchors every meal: round khobz taken to the neighbourhood oven, flaky msemen and semolina harcha at breakfast with honey, butter or amlou, the almond and argan spread from the south-west. Sweets are almond-filled kaab el ghzal and, in Ramadan, chebakia soaked in honey and sesame. Mint tea is poured from a height into small glasses at every hour, and the medina's juice carts press oranges from the Haouz plain all day long.