Morocco Tourists Attractions

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Morocco Tourists Attractions
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Popular Moroccan Cities

• Marrakech
• Agadir
• Fes
• Casablanca
• Rabat
• Tangier
• Essaouir

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Marrakech

• Marrakech "Morocco City", as early travelers
  called it has always been something of a
  pleasure city, a marketplace where the southern
  tribesmen and Berber villagers bring in their
  goods, spend their money and find entertainment.
  For visitors it's an enduring fantasy a city of
  immense beauty before a great shaft of mountains
  and immediately exciting. At the heart of it
  all is a square, Djemaa El Fna, really no more
  than an open space in the centre of the city, but
  the stage for a long-established ritual in which
  shifting circles of onlookers gather round groups
  of acrobats, drummers, pipe musicians, dancers,
  storytellers, comedians and fairground acts.

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Marrakech Continued

• The city's architectural attractions are
  compelling including the immense, still basins
  of the Agdal and Menara gardens, the delicate
  Granada-style carving of the Saadian Tombs and,
  above all, the Koutoubia Minaret, the most
  perfect Islamic monument in North Africa.

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Agadir

• Flanked by a strip of fertilizer factories, a
  vast grain silo and sardine-canning plants, SAFI
  is not the prettiest of Moroccan towns. It does,
  however, provide a glimpse of an active, modern
  and working community and the old Medina in its
  centre, walled and turreted by the Portuguese,
  holds a certain interest. The city it merits
  the name with a population of over 300,000 also
  has a strong industrial-artisan tradition, with a
  whole quarter devoted to pottery workshops. These
  have a virtual monopoly on the green, heavily
  glazed roof tiles used on palaces and mosques, as
  well as providing Morocco's main pottery exports,
  in the form of bowls, plates and garden pots.

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Agadir Continued

• The main interest in Safi is in its Medina, the
  adjoining Dar El Bahar fort, and the Colline des
  Potiers, the potters' quarter on the hill
  northeast of the Medina. Further out, on the
  Oualidia road, is the main industrial quarter and
  the new port.
• South of Safi, the coast is heavily polluted and
  industrialized, and for a beach escape you'll
  want to head north. Local buses 10 and 15 run
  to Lalla Fatna and Cap Beddouza from the Place de
  l'Indépendance. In summer there are also local
  buses to Souira Kedima.

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Fes

• The most ancient of the Imperial Capitals, and
  the most complete medieval city of the Arab
  world, FES is a place that stimulates your
  senses, with haunting and beautiful sounds,
  infinite visual details and unfiltered odors.
  More than any other city in Morocco, it seems to
  exist suspended in time somewhere between the
  Middle Ages and the modern world. As with other
  Moroccan cities, it has a French-built Ville
  Nouvelle familiar and modern in appearance and
  urban life but a quarter or so of Fes's 800,000
  inhabitants continue to live in the extraordinary
  Medina-city of Fes El Bali which owes little to
  the West besides its electricity and its tourists.

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Casablanca

• If the Hollywood image of 'Casablanca' is
  important to you, be careful about visiting
  Casablanca. No other city in Morocco is further
  away from the romantic Orientalism presented in
  the classical film of 1942. Actually the film has
  never been correct about the image presented of
  the city that gave the film its name. The Orient
  is found all over Morocco, Casablanca is a modern
  city, and beautiful in its own respect. The
  centre of Casablanca is fairly impressive. It's
  squeaky modern, with big, lively boulevards,
  high, white, well-kept buildings. And it's clean
  and efficient. People visiting Casablanca as
  their first city, could easily end up hating this
  place There are few things here confirming the
  newcomers conception on the Orient. But for
  people having visited other parts of Morocco
  first, Casablanca is good!

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Casablanca Continued

• The city is modern in a Moroccan way, and an
  excellent example of Moroccans capacity of taking
  charge of the future of their country. But as
  soon as you step out of the impressive centre of
  town, dark clouds cover the realities of people
  here. Extreme poverty and prostitution only to be
  matched by Tangier is what you'll find without
  even looking for it. No other place in the
  country displays bigger differences between the
  haves and the have-nots. If anything in
  Casablanca should fit the Casablanca of Bergman
  and Bogart, it should be the old city. It's
  small, consisting mainly of smaller houses, which
  all seem to be from this century, and the
  alleyways dominating in other old cities, are
  rarely found here. There is a good market here,
  but look around before you buy, shop keepers here
  know their skills. Some thousand people live
  here, and in one or two spots, true beauty
  occurs.

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Rabat

• Capital of the nation since independence and,
  before that, from 1912 to 1956, of the French
  Protectorate RABAT is in many ways the city
  you'd expect elegant in its spacious European
  grid, slightly self-conscious in its civilized
  modern ways, and, as an administrative centre, a
  little bit dull. If you arrive during Ramadan,
  you'll find the main avenues and boulevards an
  astonishing night-long promenade at other
  times, it's hard to find a café open past ten at
  night. Rabat, as they tell you in Casa, is
  provincial.

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Rabat Continued

• None of this makes any difference to the
  considerable historic and architectural interest
  in the city and across the estuary in Salé
  which includes some of the finest and oldest Arab
  monuments in the country, dating from the Almohad
  and Merenid dynasties. You can spend an enjoyable
  few days looking round these, and out on the
  local beaches, and there is a major plus in that,
  unlike Fes or Marrakesh, you can get round the
  place quite happily without a guide, and talk in
  cafés with people who do not depend on tourist
  money.

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Tangier

• Today, Tangier attracts around one million
  visitors every year. In summer, it is one of the
  few Moroccan towns that offers a degree of relief
  from the heat. Tangier also stands at cultural
  and commercial cross-roads, and is a stepping
  stone between Europe and Africa, Tangier is the
  gateway to Morocco. Tangier is the main port of
  the ferries coming from Europe, and almost no
  other place in Morocco holds more discos than
  Tangier. But they are totally different from the
  European ones. You should enter these for the
  sake of the music, but stay away if you're going
  for company. Inside you find small orchestras
  playing classical Arabic music, and if you like
  this kind of music, it's some of the performers
  here are first class. The music they play is
  rarely heard outside North Africa.

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Tangier Continued

• The women you meet at the discos, are
  prostitutes. And they don't only stick to discos
  and night clubs, you get approached by them even
  in normal restaurants. What surprises you, is
  their bluntness, and the acceptance of ordinary
  Moroccans around. But still Tangier is a very
  nice city, close to the sea, a long beach, an
  exotic old city. But sadly, the hustlers here are
  so professional that they're organized (actually
  true!). The moment you come out of the quay area,
  they run for you. And unlike hustlers in any
  other place in Morocco, there is nothing you can
  do to get rid of them. But do remember, many of
  them are good people, as long as you don't trust
  them too much. So choose one of them, bargain a
  price (1/hour is maximum), and enjoy. If an
  experience like this doesn't frighten you,
  Morocco will be yours. Otherwise, you should
  choose another port for entering Morocco, and
  enter with air plane.

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Essaouira

• ESSAOUIRA is by popular acclaim Morocco's most
  likeable resort an eighteenth-century town,
  enclosed by medieval-looking battlements, facing
  a cluster of rocky offshore islands, and trailed
  by a vast expanse of empty sands and dunes. Many
  of the foreign tourists making their own way to
  Essaouira, are drawn by the wind, known locally
  as the alizee, which in spring and summer can be
  a bit remorseless for sunbathing but creates
  much-sought-after waves for surfing and
  windsurfing. In recent years, the town has gained
  quite a reputation in this respect, promoting
  itself as "Wind City, Africa" and hosting
  national and international surfing contests.

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Essaouira Continued

• The life of the resort, too, is easy and
  uncomplicated, and very much in the image of the
  youthful Europeans and Marrakech's who come here
  on holiday. Not that Essaouira is exclusively a
  backpackers' resort these days it attracts all
  kinds of independent travelers, and increasing
  numbers of packages, with new chain hotels and
  villas springing up along the corniche. But, as
  yet, it's very far from spoilt, and remains a
  thoroughly enjoyable base to rest up after being
  in the cities, the Atlas or the desert.

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