Tangier, Tetouan and the northwest
The northwest can be an intense introduction to Morocco, encompassing the two Moroccan cities – Tangier and Tetouan – that are most notorious as blackspots for hustlers and unofficial guides preying on first-time visitors. Tangier, hybridized and slightly seedy from its long European contact, has a culture distinct from any other Moroccan city and an age-old role as the meeting point of Europe and Africa. With new renovation works underway throughout the city and foreign investors gradually returning to the area, spurred on by the completion of the new goods-only Tanger Mediterranée port, the continuing effort to reclaim some of Tangier’s former cosmopolitan image is becoming more and more evident.
Heading south from Tangier along the Atlantic coast towards Rabat, the best places to get acclimatized are the seaside resorts of Asilah and Larache. Asilah is a relaxed and low-key town, well known for its International Arts Festival. Larache is similarly attractive, with its coastal cafés and proximity to the ancient Carthaginian-Roman site of Lixus. A more distinctively Moroccan resort is Moulay Bousselham, south of Larache, with its windswept Atlantic beach and abundance of birdlife.
The Spanish enclave of Ceuta is a slightly frustrating port of entry though a pleasant change of pace when crossing from Morocco. In the shadow of the wild Rif mountains, Tetouan feels more Moroccan than Tangier – its Medina a glorious labyrinth, its sprawling beaches popular with both locals and visitors. South of Tetouan is the mountain town of Chefchaouen – a small-scale and enjoyably laid-back place to come to terms with being in Morocco.
Northern Morocco has an especially quirky colonial history, having been divided into three separate zones. Tetouan was the administrative capital of the Spanish zone; the French zone began at Souk el Arba du Rharb, the edge of rich agricultural plains sprawling southward; while Tangier experienced International Rule under a group of foreign legations. The Spanish enclave of Ceuta is, along with Melilla, a peculiar legacy of this colonial past.
Subsequently, although French is the official second language (after Arabic) throughout Morocco, older people in much of the northwest are equally, or more, fluent in Spanish – a basic knowledge of which can prove extremely useful.
Tangier (Tanja, Tanger) and around >
Asilah >
Larache and Lixus >
South from Larache >
Ceuta (Sebta) >
Tetouan >
The Tetouan beaches: Mdiq to Oued Laou >
Chefchaouen (Chaouen, Xaouen) and around >
Ouezzane (Wazzan) >
Travel details >
Highlights
Tangier’s Petit Socco A tiny square home to the favourite café haunts of Burroughs and Bowles, a great place to sip tea and observe the daily drama of Medina life.
The Caves of Hercules Look out to sea from this grotto in the cliffs, through a cave window shaped like Africa.
Asilah A laid-back beach resort with an intimate pastel-washed Medina, an international arts festival, and the palace of an old bandit chief.
Ancient Lixus Extensive Roman ruins in a fine setting, which you’ll have pretty much to yourself to explore.
Moulay Bousselham Wander the expansive windswept Atlantic beach and take a boat ride out to the nearby lagoon, home to diverse birdlife and pink flamingos.
Ceuta A Spanish enclave with a couple of forts and no less than three army museums – not to mention good beer, tapas, and shops full of duty-free booze.
Chefchaouen One of the prettiest and friendliest towns in Morocco, up in the Rif mountains, with a Medina full of pastel blue houses.
Tangier (Tanja, Tanger) and around
For the first half of the twentieth century TANGIER was an international city with its own laws and administration, plus an eclectic community of exiles, expatriates and refugees. It was home, at various times, to Spanish and Central European refugees, Moroccan nationalists and – drawn by loose tax laws and free-port status – to over seventy banks and four thousand companies, many of them dealing in currency transactions forbidden in their own countries. Writers were also attracted to the city. Paul Bowles, the American novelist who knew Tangier in the 1930s and called it his “dream city”, settled here after 1945. William Burroughs, in whose books Tangier appears as “Interzone”, spent most of the 1950s here, and most of the Beats – Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Brion Gysin and the rest – passed through. Tangier was also the world’s first and most famous gay resort favoured by the likes of Tennessee Williams, Joe Orton and Kenneth Williams. The ghosts of these times have left a slight air of decay about the city, still tangible in the older hotels and bars. Despite the subtle hints of past excess and glamour, the city’s days of hedonism are undoubtedly over.
Rooted in an enduring eccentricity, Tangier’s charm is nonetheless undeniable. Until recently, the city’s tourism future didn’t look too rosy, having, over the years, gained a reputation as somewhere to avoid due to continuing reports of a large population of hustlers and unsavory characters known to prey on foreign arrivals. King Mohammed VI, however, has provided much of the impetus for Tangier to re-invent itself under a flurry of renovation and building projects. Tangier’s passenger port, Tanger-Ville, is central to this economic future; there’s a constant stream of ferries arriving (nearly around the clock during the August holidays), an influx which has prompted the construction of a new coastal highway that connects Tangier to Casablanca and, ultimately, Marrakesh. Despite all efforts to resurrect Tangier, progress is slow and the city has retained a unique atmosphere very much defined by its sometimes turbulent history.
The Bay of Tangier curves around to a pair of capes: Spartel to the west, with the picturesque Caves of Hercules; and Malabata to the east, which has the better beaches. Either makes a pleasant detour or afternoon’s trip from Tangier.
Tangier’s hustlers
Faux guides (“false guides”) are petty crooks who attach themselves to new-in-town tourists, usually claiming to be “guiding” you and therefore due payment, or just steering you into hotels or shops where they receive a commission (added to your bill, naturally). At one time, Tangier’s faux guides were particularly heavy. Nowadays they have largely been cleaned out of town thanks to a nationwide police crackdown,
Generally speaking, faux guides now limit their activities to encouraging you to visit the shops that employ them – though if they can hustle you into a hotel that will pay them commission, they will do that too. Most will also try to sell you kif (cannabis).
Faux guides have a number of approaches you will soon learn to recognize: a favourite is trying to guess your nationality, or asking “Are you lost?” or “What are you looking for?” If you ignore them or turn down their advances, they will typically accuse you of being angry or “paranoid”. The best way to get rid of them is to ignore them completely, or explain politely (while never slackening your pace) that you are all right and don’t need any help. As a last resort – and it should not come to this – you can dive into a café or even threaten to go to the police if necessary (the Brigade Touristique are based in the former Gare de Ville train station by the port, and there is also a police post in the kasbah). Bear in mind that local residents, as well as the law, are on your side.
Some history
Tingis is Amazigh (Berber) for a marsh, betraying the site’s Berber origins, though it was colonized around the seventh century BC by the Phoenicians, a seafaring people from what is now Lebanon. In 42 AD, the Romans made Tingis the capital of their newly created province of Mauretania Tingitania (roughly the north of modern Morocco). In 429AD, with the collapse of the Roman Empire’s western half, Tangier was taken by the Vandals, after which point things become a bit hazy. It seems to have been regained a century or so later by the Roman Empire’s resurgent eastern half in the form of the Byzantines, before falling to Spain’s rulers, the Visigoths, in the early seventh century.
In 707, Tangier was taken by the Arabs, who used it as a base for their invasion of the Iberian Peninsula. With the Christian reconquest of Spain and Portugal however, Tangier was itself vulnerable to attack from across the Straits, and fell to the Portuguese in 1471. In 1661, they gave it to the British (along with Bombay) as part of Princess Catherine of Braganza’s dowry on her wedding to Charles II. Tangier’s Portuguese residents, accusing British troops of looting and rape, abandoned the town, but new settlers arrived, many of them Jewish refugees from Spain, and Britain granted the city a charter guaranteeing freedom of religion, trade and immigration. The British also introduced tea, now Morocco’s national drink. Under virtually constant siege however, they found Tangier an expensive and unrewarding possession. Moulay Ismail laid siege to the city in 1678, and in 1680, England’s parliament refused any further funding to defend it. Four years later, unable to withstand the siege any longer, the British abandoned Tangier. The city then remained in Moroccan hands until the twentieth century, growing in importance as a port – one of its exports, mandarins, even took their name from the city, being known in Europe as tangerines.
Tangier’s strategic position made it a coveted prize for all the colonial powers at the end of the nineteenth century. European representatives started insinuating themselves into the administration of the city, taking control of vital parts of the infrastructure, and when France and Spain decided to carve up Morocco between them, Britain insisted that Tangier should become an International Zone, with all Western powers having an equal measure of control. This was agreed as early as 1905, and finalized by treaty in 1923. An area of 380 square kilometres, with some 150,000 inhabitants, the International Zone was administered by a representative of the Sultan called the Mendoub, “assisted” by representatives of the Zone’s foreign communities (Spanish, French, British, Portuguese, Dutch, Belgian, Italian and Swedish, joined after World War II by the Americans).
At the International Zone’s peak in the early 1950s, Tangier’s foreign communities numbered 60,000 – then nearly half the population. As for the other half, pro-independence demonstrations in 1952 and 1953 made it abundantly clear that most Tanjawis (natives of Tangier) wanted to be part of a united, independent Morocco. When they gained their wish in 1956, Tangier lost its special status, and almost overnight, the finance and banking businesses shifted their operations to Spain and Switzerland. The expatriate communities dwindled too as the new national government imposed bureaucratic controls and instituted a “clean-up” of the city. Brothels – previously numbering almost a hundred – were banned, and in the early 1960s “The Great Scandal” erupted, sparked by a number of paedophile convictions and escalating into a wholesale closure of the once outrageous gay bars. After a period of significant decline, the last decade has been one of rapid development as both the Moroccan government and foreign investors have directed more interest towards the city and its future.
Arrival
Disembarking by ferry at Tangier can be a slow process, with long queues for passport control and customs. Make sure that you have your passport stamped (and departure card collected) while on board the ferry; announcements to this effect are not always made in English, so make your way to the purser’s office during the journey. If you miss out on this, you’ll be left until last by the officials in Tangier.
Outside the main terminal building are offices for the various ferry companies and branches of most of the local banks (some with ATM); most sell dirhams at regular rates but they don’t always accept travellers’ cheques. There is also an Assurance Frontière office in case you need to sort vehicle insurance, and a consigne (left luggage) just outside the port entrance, round the corner from the CTM office and about 20m up Rue du Portugal towards the Medina steps. Expect to pay about 10dh per piece.
Unofficial guides – or hustlers – can be incredibly persistent around the port entrance, telling you some fairly amazing tales: the hotels are full, the Medina is dangerous, the trains and buses are on strike. Don’t take too much of this at face value, and don’t feel in any way duty-bound to employ anyone’s services – you don’t need a guide in Tangier. From the port, it’s a relatively short walk into the centre or a short ride by petit taxi (which should be around 10dh on the meter); you may need to insist that it’s used.
Tangier’s airport, Ibn Batouta International, is 15km outside the city. Taxis line up outside the terminal and should charge 120dh for up to six passengers (get a group together before leaving the terminal building). The only other option is to walk 2km to the main road, where you can pick up bus #9, which goes to Rue de Fes in town. The newly built terminal has a few banks which are usually open to meet incoming flights; one of them will cash travellers’ cheques and they have ATMs. There is also a post office, British Airways and Royal Air Maroc desks as well as desks for most of the international car rental firms.
Trains arrive and depart from, Tanger Ville, 3km from the port, and around 15dh from the centre by petit taxi. The station is served by bus #16, which will get you as far as the bus station (see below), but does not run into the city centre. Tanger Ville is very handy for hotels at the eastern end of the beach and is a short taxi ride from the city centre which is 3km away. The penultimate stop, suburban Tanger Morora, is 4km from the city centre. The #13 bus heads directly into town from here. Bus services from most towns generally arrive at Tangier Gare Routière, south of the Ville Nouvelle. CTM has buses from Rabat, Casablanca, Fes, Marrakesh and the other major cities, some of which continue on from the gare routière to the port entrance. It’s about a fifteen-minute walk into town from the gare routière, or around 10dh by petit taxi.
Orientation and information
After the initial confusion of an unfamiliar Arab city, Tangier is surprisingly easy to find your way around. As with all the larger Moroccan cities, it’s made up of two parts: the Medina, the original Moroccan town, and the Ville Nouvelle, built by its several European colonizers. Inside the Medina, a classic web of alleyways and stepped passages, is the old citadel or kasbah, with the former Sultanate’s palace at its centre.
Together with the beach and the seafront Avenue Mohammed VI the easiest reference points are the city’s three main squares – the Grand Socco, Petit Socco and Place de France. Place de France is a conventional, French-looking square at the heart of the Ville Nouvelle, flanked by kerbside cafés and a terrace-belvedere looking out over the Straits to Spain with the small port of Tarifa usually visible almost directly opposite. From here, Boulevard Pasteur (the main city street) leads off past the helpful ONMT Délégation de Tourisme at no. 29 where official guides can be enlisted (Mon–Fri 8.30am–4.30pm; 0539 948050), towards the main PTT (post office)on Boulevard Mohammed V.
North from Place de France, Rue de la Liberté runs to the Grand Socco, a popular open space in front of the Medina. The north side of the square opens onto the Medina’s principal street, Rue es Siaghin, which culminates in the Petit Socco, a tiny square of old cafés and cheap hotels.
Street name confusions
Spanish and French colonial names are still in use alongside their Arabicized successors. In addition, both Rue and Calle are sometimes replaced by Zankat, and Avenue and Boulevard by Charih. Local maps tend to use the new Arabic versions, though not all of the street signs have been changed. In the text and maps of this guide, we have used new names only when firmly established. Among the main street-name changes, note:
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Beach
Avenue d’Espagne – Avenue Mohammed VI
Avenues des FAR – Avenue Mohammed VI
City transport
Grands taxis (large cream/beige Mercedes) are permitted to carry up to six passengers. The price for a ride should be fixed in advance – 15–20dh per person is standard for any trip within the city, including tip.
Small blue/green petits taxis (which carry just three passengers) can be flagged down around the town. Most of these are metered – a typical rate for a city trip is 10dh per person – make sure the driver starts his meter from zero. On the streets you can hail a taxi, whether it has passengers or not; if it is going in your direction it will generally take you. If you join a taxi with passengers, you pay the full fare, as if it were empty. After 8pm both grand and petit taxi rates increase by fifty percent.
City buses are not much good to tourists. The most useful route is #2, which runs from St Andrew’s Church in the Grand Socco to Ziyatin and on to the village of Jabila, not far from the Caves of Hercules. At weekends in summer, it runs to the caves themselves; other times, you can get a grand taxi from Ziyatin. Route #9 goes from Rue de Fes along the Rabat road to the airport turn-off, some 2km from the airport itself. Route #16 connects the train station and the bus station, and runs on to Cape Malabata, but does not serve the city centre.
Accommodation
Tangier has dozens of hotels and pensions, and finding a room is rarely much of a problem. The city does, however, get crowded during July and August, when many Moroccan families holiday here, or spend a few days en route to and from Europe. Cheaper hotels and pensions hike up their prices at this time of year, and you’ll often get a better deal at one of the mid-range hotels. As always, there is a choice between the Medina or Ville Nouvelle, the latter offering greater comforts.
The closest campsite to Tangier is the intermittently open Camping Miramonte, also known as Camping Marshan (0539 937133). Another option is Camping Ashakar (0674 719419), 16km from town above the Caves of Hercules.
Seafront hotels
All the places below are along or just off the seafront Avenue Mohammed VI. Several hotels are on Rue Magellan, which is easy to miss: it zigzags up from the seafront alongside the Hôtel Biarritz towards Boulevard Pasteur in the Ville Nouvelle. A number of others are on Rue de la Plage, which runs uphill from the port to the Grand Socco and is lined with small pensions.
All those listed below are within walking distance of the port except for Hôtel Mövenpick which is on the outskirts and requires a taxi to get to.
All these hotels are marked on the Tangier City Centre map, except where stated.
Atlas Rif & Spa Hôtel 152 Av Mohammed VI; 0539 349300, www.hotelsatlas.com. A luxury four-star where Churchill once stayed, overlooking the beach and the best-value pick of the upscale seafront hotels with refurbished rooms, restaurant, swimming pool, fitness centre, and bar. 1000–1499dh (£80-120/$131-196/€88-132)
Hôtel Biarritz 104 Av Mohammed VI 0539 932473. An old hotel with comfortable rooms, all en suite, and a fair bit of charm. Reductions for long stays. 200–349dh (£16-28/$26-46/€18-30)
Hôtel Bristol 14 Rue el Antaki 0539 942914. A good bet, 100m uphill from the beach, with large en-suite rooms with TVs, plus a bar and restaurant. A 1950s lift still operates and saves climbing the stairs. 200–349dh (£16-28/$26-46/€18-30)
Hôtel el Djenina 8 Rue el Antaki 0539 942244, eldjenina@menara.ma. Though the rooms are a little on the small side, it’s immaculate and an excellent choice. 350–499dh (£28-40/$46-65/€30-44)
Hôtel el Muniria 1 Rue Magellan 0539 935337 or 0510 047227. This is where William Burroughs wrote The Naked Lunch (in room 9, no longer available), and Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg stayed here too when they came to visit him. Nowadays it’s a clean and quiet family-run pension – the main remnant of its Beat history being the adjoining Tanger Inn bar. En-suite showers, but hot water mornings and evenings only. 200–349dh (£16-28/$26-46/€18-30)
Hôtel Exclesior 17 Rue Magellan, straight up from Hôtel Biarritz 0534 436987. This 23-roomed hotel has seen better days but is good value for the price. Large, airy rooms, some with small balconies and views. Shared showers and toilets. Hot showers 10dh. 100–199dh (£8-16/$13-26/€9-18)
Hôtel l’Marsa 92 Av Mohammed VI 0539 932339. Located above its own pavement restaurant with a range of rooms available, some of them with balcony and ocean views. Shared showers and toilets. 100–199dh (£8-16/$13-26/€9-18)
Hôtel Marco Polo Corner of Av Mohammed VI & Rue el Antaki 0539 941124. Recently refurbished and very efficiently run, with 33 comfortable rooms in a new extension, popular restaurant, lively bar (both open to non-residents), fitness centre, and hammam. 350–499dh (£28-40/$46-65/€30-44)
Hôtel Mövenpick Route de Malabata; off map, Tangier 0539 329300, www.moevenpick-hotels.com. One of Tangier’s most deluxe hotels, 3km east of town on the road to Malabata, with three restaurants, a pool, health club, sauna and casino, with some rooms adapted for wheelchair users. 1500–2499dh (£120-199/$196-327/€132-219)
Hôtel Nabil 11 Rue Magellan 0539 375407. A refurbished warehouse converted into a first-class hotel. All rooms are en suite, and there are stunning views from the front top-floor rooms. Parking garage for residents. 200–349dh (£16-28/$26-46/€18-30)
Pension Atou 45 Rue de la Plage (no phone). Basic, slightly musty rooms with no showers (there are public ones just down the street), but very cheap, especially for singles. 99dh or under (under £8/$13/€9)
Pension Miami 126 Rue de la Plage 0539 932900. Beautifully tiled old Spanish town-house said to be over a hundred years old. Pleasant rooms, and bathrooms on each corridor. If full try Pension Madrid next door. 100–199dh (£8-16/$13-26/€9-18)
Central Ville Nouvelle hotels
Most of these recommendations are within a few blocks of Place de France/Place de Faro and the central Boulevard Pasteur; coming up from the port, if you’ve got much luggage, a taxi can be useful as it’s a steep climb. All these hotels are marked on the Tangier City Centre map, except where stated.
Hôtel Dawliz Complex Dawliz, 42 Rue de Hollande 0539 333377, www.ledawliz.com. Facing the once elegant but now ruined Grand Hôtel Villa de France, this four-star establishment has a pool and all mod cons (satellite TV, a/c, heating and so on). Breakfast included. 700–999dh (£56-80/$92-131/€61-88)
Hôtel de Paris 42 Bd Pasteur 0539 931877, 0539 938126. Central hotel with spacious and spotless rooms, good breakfasts, a few Art Deco touches in the public areas, some interesting old photos in the lobby and very helpful staff. Breakfast included. 350–499dh (£28-40/$46-65/€30-44)
Hôtel el Minzah 85 Rue el Houria (Rue de la Liberté) 0539 333444, www.elminzah.com. Built in 1931, this remains Tangier’s most prestigious hotel, with a wonderful garden, a pool overlooking the sea and town, elegant (if pricey) bar, and a new wellness centre with hammam. Past guests have included Cecil Beaton, Jean Genet and Mick Jagger, and tradition has it that it was from here that World War II Allied agents spied on their German counterparts at the Hôtel Rif. 1500–2499dh (£120-199/$196-327/€132-219)
Pension Hollande 139 Rue de Hollande 0539 937838. Behind the French Consulate, this large, airy house, shaded by trees, offers simple, but good-value rooms and free off-road parking. 100–199dh (£8-16/$13-26/€9-18)
Rembrandt Hôtel Corner of blvds Pasteur and Mohammed V 0539 333314, www.hotel-rembrandt.com. A reasonably stylish hotel with bar and pool, but starting to show its age. 700–999dh (£56-80/$92-131/€61-88)
Medina hotels
In the Medina you have a choice between basic pensions and pricey upscale riads. To reach the Medina from the port, either walk up Rue du Portugal to the Grand Socco, or go up the steps behind the port entrance, round to the Grand Mosque and the junction of Rue des Postes/Rue Dar el Baroud. All these places are marked on the Tangier Medina map.
Dar Nour 20 Rue Gourna, in the kasbah, off Rue Sidi Ahmed Boukouja 0662 112724, www.darnour.com. Tangier’s first guesthouse is now run by a French trio who have created ten individually styled suites in what was once five small houses. Sweeping views from the terrace of the Medina and Straits can be enjoyed over a sumptuous breakfast (included). 700–999dh (£56-80/$92-131/€61-88)
Hôtel Continental 36 Rue Dar el Baroud, easily reached from the Petit Socco 0539 931024, hcontinental@iam.net.ma. By far the best hotel in the Medina, the Continental was founded in 1865, with Queen Victoria’s son Alfred its first official guest, and other notables have included Degas and Churchill. Today, the hotel has a somewhat ragged feel and, despite renovations, is showing its age. However, nothing can detract from the unrivalled view of the port from its terrace – captured in Bertolucci’s film of Paul Bowles’ novel The Sheltering Sky. 500–699dh (£40-56/$65-92/€44-61)
Hôtel du Grand Socco (aka Hôtel Taïef) Grand Socco, entrance round the back on Rue Imam Layti. The oldest hotel in Tangier. It’s seen better days, but the large rooms are reasonable value if shared, and the café has a great vista over the Grand Socco. No showers, but public ones less than 50m away. 100–199dh (£8-16/$13-26/€9-18)
Hôtel Mamora 19 Rue des Postes 0539 934105. Centrally located in the heart of the Medina, with clean, pleasant rooms, all with showers – though there’s only hot water in the mornings. 200–349dh (£16-28/$26-46/€18-30)
Hôtel Olid 12 Rue des Postes 0539 931310. Tatty, ramshackle and eccentrically decorated, but still reasonable value for money. Some rooms are en suite. Hot showers 10dh. 100–199dh (£8-16/$13-26/€9-18)
La Tangerina 19 Riad Sultan, in the kasbah 0539 947731, www.latangerina.com. Pared, down Mediterranean elegance, stylishly composed interiors, an ambiance of simple luxury and an outstanding terrace overlooking the Straits have quickly established this well-run guesthouse as one of Tangiers’ best. 700–999dh (£56-80/$92-131/€61-88)
Pension Fuentes 9 Petit Socco, at the heart of the Medina 0539 934669. One of the first hotels in Tangier and still a friendly and atmospheric dive. The café below can be noisy. 100–199dh (£8-16/$13-26/€9-18)
Pension Palace 2 Rue des Postes 0539 936128. A touch of past splendours – balconies and a central court with fountain – led Bertolucci to shoot part of The Sheltering Sky here. Many rooms have a rugged charm and there are a few with en suites. 100–199dh (£8-16/$13-26/€9-18)
Riad Tanja 2 Rue Amar Alilech, turn off Rue de Portugal near the American Legation 0539 333538, 0539 333054. Less than two years old and already known for exemplary service and a warm, understated character. Five rooms decorated with zellij tiling, all en suite and some with their own sitting room complete with satellite TV. Parking available near the American Steps. Breakfast included. 700–1499dh (£80-120/$131-196/€88-132)
The beach and Ville Nouvelle
Tangier’s interest and attraction lies in the city as a whole: its café life, beach, and the tumbling streets of the Medina. The handful of “monuments”, with the notable exception of the Dar el Makhzen palace, are best viewed as adding direction to your wanderings, rather than as unmissable sights.
The town beach
During the day at least, the beach is a pleasant place to escape the city streets. It is easier, safer and some say compulsory to change in a cabin, so when you arrive at the beach you might like to attach yourself to one of the beach bars, most of which offer showers and deck chairs, as well as food and drink. With bars and restaurants opening and closing sporadically the favourites change each year. The Sun Beach, where Tennessee Williams wrote a first draft of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, is the exception and still manages to tick away all year with a regular flow of clientele. Mondial and Miramar are two of the better recent additions, and Miami, with its gardens to laze around in, is one of the most pleasant.
By day, don’t leave anything on the beach unattended. By night, limit your exploration to the beach bars as the beach itself, although floodlit, can still be unsafe and you may become a target.
The Grand Socco and Place de France
The Grand Socco is the obvious place to start a ramble around the town. Its name, like so many in Tangier, is a French–Spanish hybrid, proclaiming its origins as the main market square. The markets have long gone, but the square remains a meeting place and its cafés are good points to absorb the city’s life. The Grand Socco’s official but little-used name, Place du 9 Avril 1947, commemorates the visit of Sultan Mohammed V to the city on that date – an occasion when, for the first time and at some personal risk, he identified himself with the struggle for Moroccan independence.
A memorial to this event (in Arabic) is to be found amid the Mendoubia gardens, flanking the square, which enclose the former offices of the Mendoub – the Sultan’s representative during the international years and a spectacular banyan tree, said to be over 800 years old.
Also of interest is the little Fondouk Market, which is to be found by following Rue de la Liberté from the Grand Socco towards Place de France, then turning left down a series of steps, before the El Minzah hotel. The stalls here offer everything from pottery to spectacle repairs, from fruit and vegetables to bric-a-brac and plain old junk.
Over in the Place de France, the cafés are the main attraction – and at their best in the late afternoon and early evening, when an interesting mix of local and expatriate regulars turn out to watch and be watched. The seats to choose are outside the Café Paris, a legendary rendezvous throughout the years of the International Zone. During World War II, this was notorious as a centre of deal making and intrigue between agents from Britain, America, Germany, Italy and Japan. Later the emphasis shifted to Morocco’s own politics: the first nationalist paper, La Voix du Maroc, surfaced at the café, and the nationalist leader Allal el Fassi, exiled in Tangier from the French-occupied zone, set up his Istiqlal party headquarters nearby.
St Andrew’s Church and the Galerie d’Art Contemporain
Just south of the Grand Socco, on Rue d’Angleterre, is the nineteenth-century Anglican Church of St Andrew, one of the city’s odder sights in its fusion of Moorish decoration, English country churchyard and flapping Scottish flag – the cross of St Andrew, to whom the church is dedicated (though, being an English church, they sometimes fly the cross of St George instead). The regular congregation has fallen considerably but the church is still used for Sunday morning services (8.30am & 11am), when the numbers are swollen by worshippers from West African countries, particularly Nigeria, en route (hopefully) to a better life in Europe.
In the strangely serene graveyard, among the laments of early deaths from malaria, you come upon the tomb of Walter Harris, the most brilliant of the chroniclers of “Old Morocco” in the closing decades of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. Also buried here is Dean of Dean’s Bar (“Missed by all and sundry”), a former London cocaine dealer (real name Don Kimfull) who left Britain after being implicated in a scandal surrounding the death by overdose of a young actress in 1919 – he tended bar in Germany, France and the El Minzah hotel before opening his own bar in 1937, and worked as a spy for British intelligence in Tangier during World War II. Other graves reveal epitaphs to Caid Sir Harry Maclean, the Scottish military adviser to Sultan Moulay Abd el Aziz at the turn of the twentieth century; and to a number of Allied aircrew who died over the Straits in the last days of World War II. Inside the church another Briton, Emily Keane, is commemorated. A contemporary of Harris, she lived a very different life, marrying in 1877 the Shereef of Ouezzane – at the time one of the most holy towns of the country.
A little further along Rue d’Angleterre is a large white-walled villa, formerly the British Consulate and now the recently refurbished and well-funded Galerie d’Art Contemporain Mohamed Drissi (Tues–Sun 9am–5:30pm; free) devoted to contemporary Moroccan and European artists with new exhibitions every month. Nearby, only just visible over a high wall, the now sadly derelict remains of the Grand Hôtel Villa de France belie its place in art history: the French painters Eugène Delacroix and Henri Matisse both stayed here, and Matisse painted one of his best works through the window of his room.
The American Legation and Gran Teatro Cervantes
If you follow Rue de la Plage out of the Grand Socco, then turn left down towards the port on the Rue du Portugal, you come to a small gate in the Medina wall on the left; climb the steps to the gate and, just through it, is the American Legation (Mon–Thurs 10am–1pm & 3–5pm, Fri 10am–noon & 3–5pm, other times by appointment; free; 0539 935317, www.legation.org), a former palace given to the US government by the Sultan Moulay Slimane, and preserved today as the only American historic landmark abroad. Morocco was the first overseas power to recognize an independent United States and this was the first American ambassadorial residence, established in 1777. A fascinating three-storey palace, bridging an alleyway (the Rue d’Amérique) below, it houses excellent exhibits on the city’s history – including the correspondence between Sultan Moulay Ben Abdallah and George Washington – and has displays of paintings by, mainly, Moroccan-resident American artists. Malcolm Forbes’s military miniatures of the Battle of Songhai and the Battle of Three Kings are also on display having been donated by the Forbes family when the Forbes Museum was closed. Downstairs, by the library, a room dedicated to Paul Bowles features photographs of Bowles and his contemporaries, including a shot of him by Beat poet Allen Ginsberg. Separate from the downstairs library, there is a research library (Mon–Thurs 9am–4pm, Fri 9am–2pm) containing an interesting selection of books on Moroccan history and archeology which you can peruse if you call ahead and book an appointment.
Over to the southeast of the Grand Socco, off the Rue de la Plage, is another interesting relic of Tangier’s international past, the Gran Teatro Cervantes – the old Spanish theatre. Located on a side street still labelled in Spanish as Calle Esperanza Orellana (the wife of its architect), it is an unmistakeable building, with its tiled, Art Nouveau front and impressive glass dome. The facade was restored with the help of EU and Spanish funds, though it is starting to show signs of wear again and sadly the interior remains derelict.
The Medina
The Grand Socco offers the most straightforward approach to the Medina. The arch at the northern corner of the square (probably on the site of a Roman gate) opens onto Rue d’Italie, which becomes Rue de la Kasbah, the northern entrance to the kasbah quarter. Through an opening on the righthand side of the square is Rue es Siaghin, off which are most of the souks and at the end of which is the Petit Socco, the Medina’s main square. An alternative approach to the Medina is from the seafront: follow the American steps, west of the port, up from Avenue Mohammed VI, walk round by the Grand Mosque, and Rue des Postes (Rue Mokhtar Ahardane) will lead you into the Petit Socco.
Rue es Siaghin
Rue es Siaghin – Silversmiths’ Street – follows the course of a Roman street, and was Tangier’s main thoroughfare into the 1930s. Halfway along from the Grand Socco (on the right) is the old Spanish Cathedral and Mission. The area behind here was formerly the Mellah, or Jewish quarter, centred around Rue des Synagogues.
The Petit Socco
The Petit Socco, or Zoco Chico, (Little Market) seems too small ever to have served such a purpose, though in Roman times this was probably the site of the forum. In the nineteenth century the square was almost twice its present size, and it was only at the beginning of the twentieth century that the hotels and cafés were built. There’s a seedy and rather conspiratorial atmosphere, and yet the square remains alluring, having been a central location in many of the Moroccan stories of artist, storyteller and friend of Paul Bowles, Mohammed Mrabet, who still frequents it.
In the heyday of the “International City”, with easily exploited Arab and Spanish sexuality a major attraction, it was in the alleys behind the Socco that the straight and gay brothels were concentrated. William Burroughs used to hang out around the square: “I get averages of ten very attractive propositions a day”, he wrote to Allen Ginsberg. The Socco cafés (the now decidedly chic, Café Central was once the prime Beat location) lost much of their appeal at independence, when the sale of alcohol was banned in the Medina, but they remain diverting places to sit around, people-watch, talk and get some measure of the town. Today the reek of hashish pervades the square, but foreigners are strongly advised not to smoke it in the Petit Socco’s cafés. The fact that Moroccans all seem to be partaking does not make it safe.
The area around the Petit Socco has an important place in Morocco’s postal history. During the days of the International Zone, Britain, Spain, France and – until World War I – Germany all had post offices in Tangier. Spain’s was at no. 3 in the square itself, Britain’s at 23 Rue de la Marine. A few doors towards the square, 37 Rue de la Marine was the office of Morocco’s first ever postal service back in the nineteenth century, a pony-express-like horseback relay service between Tangier and Fes. Number 76, opposite, was the site of Morocco’s first national bank.
Towards the kasbah
Walking up from the Petit Socco, you can follow Rue des Chrétiens and its continuation Rue Amrah and emerge, with luck, around the lower gate to the kasbah. Heading past the Socco towards the sea walls are two small streets straddled by the Grand Mosque. If you want to get down to the beach, follow Rue des Postes and you’ll hit the flight of steps (known as the “American Steps”) down to the port. If you feel like wandering, take the other one, Rue de la Marine, which curls into Rue Dar el Baroud and the entrance to the Hôtel Continental – another fine place to sit and drink tea.
The Grand Mosque itself is screened from public view – and, as throughout Morocco, entrance is strictly forbidden to non-Muslims.
The kasbah and beyond
The kasbah, walled off from the Medina on the highest rise of the coast, has been the palace and administrative quarter since Roman times. It was the Brits who destroyed the city’s medieval fortifications, including a great upper castle which covered the entire site of the present-day kasbah. It is a strange, somewhat sparse area of walled compounds, occasional colonnades, and a number of luxurious villas built in the 1920s, when this became one of the Mediterranean’s chicest residential sites. Richard Hughes, author of A High Wind in Jamaica (and of a book of Moroccan tales), was the first European to take a house here – his address fabulously titled “Numéro Zéro, La Kasbah, Tangier”.
Among those who followed was the eccentric Woolworths heiress, Barbara Hutton, who reputedly outbid General Franco for her mini palace, Sidi Hosni. Her parties were legendary – including a ball where thirty Reguibat racing camels and their drivers were brought 1000 miles from the Sahara to form a guard of honour.
The kasbah’s main point of interest is the former Sultanate Palace, or Dar el Makhzen, now converted to an excellent museum. It stands near the main gateway to the Medina, the Bab el Assa, to the rear of a formal court, or mechouar, where the town’s pashas held public audience and gave judgement well into the twentieth century. The entrance to the palace, a modest-looking porch, is in the left-hand corner of the court as you enter from the Medina.
Just before the entrance to the palace, you pass (on your left) the ramshackle clubhouse of the Orquesta Andalusi de Tanger, a fine group of musicians who play Andalous music with a lot of swing. If they’re around practising, they may well invite you in to watch them play.
The Dar el Makhzen and Café Detroit
The Dar el Makhzen – built, like the Grand Mosque, by Moulay Ismail – last saw royal use in 1912, with the residence of the Sultan Moulay Hafid and his entourage of 168, who was exiled to Tangier after his forced abdication by the French. The extraordinary negotiations which then took place are chronicled in Walter Harris’s Morocco That Was.
The design is centred on two interior courtyards, each with rich arabesques, painted wooden ceilings and marble fountains. Some of the flanking columns are of Roman origin, particularly well suited to the small display of mosaics and finds from Volubilis. The palace is home to a museum of crafts and antiquities (daily 9am–4pm, closed Tues; 10dh; 0539 932097, www.maroc.net/museums) which has been completely revamped and contains within its rooms well-presented artefacts discovered in and around Tangier, with origins dating from the Palaeolithic era up until Portuguese occupation. Other exhibits include a map depicting international trade routes, a section dedicated to the Islamization of Tangier, and an interesting room concerned with Roman religion and funeral rites.
At the entrance to the main part of the palace is the Bit el Mal, the old treasury, and adjoining is a small private mosque, near to which is the entrance to the herb- and shrub-lined palace gardens, shaded by jacaranda trees. If you leave this way, along Rue Riad Sultan, you will pass under the Café Detroit (Détroit is French for “strait”). The café, originally called 1001 Nights, was set up in the early 1960s by Beat writer Brion Gysin, partly as a venue for the Master Musicians of Jajouka, drummers and pipe-players from a village in the foothills of the Rif who achieved cult fame when they worked with Rolling Stone Brian Jones, a friend of Gysin’s. The café has recently re-opened (daily except Tues 10am–12:30pm) and besides being a café, restaurant and bar, is used as a venue for fusion dance performances (usually held on Sat). There are fantastic views of the Straits from the terrace and meals are served in the main salon.
Malcolm Forbes: Tangier’s last tycoon
The American publishing tycoon Malcolm Forbes bought the Palais du Mendoub in 1970. His reason, ostensibly at least, was the acquisition of a base for launching and publishing an Arab-language version of Forbes Magazine – the “millionaires’ journal”. For the next two decades, until his death in 1990, he was a regular visitor to the city, and it was at the Tangier palace that he decided to host his last great extravagance, his seventieth birthday party, in 1989.
This was the grandest social occasion Tangier had seen since the days of Woolworths heiress Barbara Hutton, whose scale and spectacle Forbes presumably intended to emulate and exceed. Spending an estimated $2.5m, he brought in his friend Elizabeth Taylor as co-host and chartered a 747, a DC-8 and Concorde to fly in eight hundred of the world’s rich and famous from New York and London. The party entertainment was on an equally imperial scale, including six hundred drummers, acrobats and dancers, and a fantasia – a cavalry charge which ends with the firing of muskets into the air – by three hundred Berber horsemen.
Malcolm’s party was a mixed public relations exercise, with even the gossip press feeling qualms about such a display of American affluence in a country like Morocco, and, despite Liz Taylor’s presence at Forbes’ side, using the choice of location to hint at the tycoon’s sexual preferences (a story that broke in full cry after Forbes’ death). However, Forbes most likely considered the party a success, for his guests included not just the celebrity rich – Gianni Agnelli, Robert Maxwell, Barbara Walters, Henry Kissinger – but half a dozen US state governors and the chief executives or presidents of scores of multinational corporations likely to advertise in his magazine. And, of course, it was tax deductible.
His former home on Rue Mohammed Tazi, in the 1990s was used to house personal guests of King Hassan II. Until recently, it was open as a museum but has now been returned to a royal residence and is off limits to the public.
Café Hafa, Palais du Mendoub and Jews’ Beach
Leaving the Medina by Bab el Kasbah, a ten- to fifteen-minute stroll along Rue Asad Ibn Farrat and then Rue Shakespeare (Rue Mohammed Tazi), will bring you to the area known as La Marshan, an exclusive residential quarter with a rich spread of villas, consulates and royal properties. You will pass on your right the small Marchan Art Gallery (daily except Fri 10am–1pm & 3–6pm) owned by local artist Rachid Alaoui. After no. 118, and just before the sports stadium, a rock on a concrete pedestal and a series of columns on the north side of the street lead down to a group of Punic rock-tombs, not very exciting in themselves, but a lovely spot where Tanjawis come to smoke a pipe of kif, or just admire the view across the Straits to the Spanish town of Tarifa. On a clear day, you can also see the Rock of Gibraltar over to the right. The next turning, bearing left down a narrow lane, leads to the rustic Café Hafa. The steep hillside is terraced and from the café, shaded by shrubs and trees, there are stunning views over the Straits (despite the new highway below). Serving coffee, mint tea, sandwiches and cakes, this is just the place to spend the late afternoon – as was the habit of Paul Bowles and his friends, Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote and Jack Kerouac.
Continuing along Rue Mohammed Tazi you come to the Palais du Mendoub on the right which is currently being used as a private royal residence. From the 1920s, this was the home of the Mendoub, the sultan’s representative during the international years, and more recently was owned by Malcolm Forbes. Continuing past the palace for a further 1km, you reach Camping Miramonte, and a track down to the Jews’ Beach – so called from its role as the landing stage for Spanish Jews fleeing the Inquisition. There is a pleasant little beach café open here in summer.
La Montagne and Villa Josephine
The two most prestigious addresses in Tangier are La Marshan, the area west of the Palais du Mendoub, and La Montagne, the “Mountain” behind the Spanish Consulate, on the inland route to Cap Spartel. The Mountain is home to two vast royal palaces and is peppered with villas, most with stunning gardens and views of the bay.
In the Sidi Masmoudi area below La Montagne is the iconic Villa Josephine built by the writer Walter Harris, and former residence of Pasha el Glaoui. The villa is now a top-end maison d’hôte and the whole estate is in impeccable condition, retaining the Mediterranean, Arab and African influences from its original owner. There is a restaurant (open to the public Mon–Sat) and bar as well as an outdoor terrace with fantastic views of both the Straits of Gibraltar and Bay of Tangier. To reach Villa Josephine take a petit taxi from the Grand Socco (20dh).
Eating, drinking and nightlife
Over the last few years, the local restaurant scene has been rejuvenated and there is currently an impressive selection of restaurants serving various international cusines, ranging from inexpensive to top end, scattered around the city centre. The possibilities for films, theatre, the occasional concert and, at the right time of year, festivals are also surprisingly varied. The same can’t really be said for most of the bars and discos which seem to be either stuck in a time warp or grossly expensive.
Restaurants
Alcohol is not served in the Medina (except in upscale guesthouses and Hôtel Continental. For late-night snacks, several of the cafés around the Grand Socco stay open all night.
Medina
All these restaurants are shown on the map of Tangier Medina, unless otherwise stated.
Chez Hammadi 2 Rue de la Kasbah 0539 934514. Just outside the west wall of the Medina, this is a rather kitsch salon, where traditional Moroccan dishes – and good pastilla – are served to entertainment from a worthwhile band of Andalous musicians. Moderate.
Chez Hassan 22 Rue es Siaghin. Small, unpretentious restaurant (with Arabic/English name sign up high) on the main street of the Medina, not far from the Petit Socco, serving decent Moroccan fare. Cheap.
Falafel Café Petit Socco. A small café serving falafel, hummus, and tabouleh; a welcome change of pace to café-grill lunches. Cheap.
Mamounia Palace 4 Rue es Siaghin. A nicely done-out place, not quite achieving the palatial style it aspires to, but laid-back, with comfortable seating, unobtrusive musicians and decent food. The only options are two set menus, at 115dh each.
Les Passagers de Tanger Grand Socco 0619 000250. A roof-top brasserie overlooking the square, run by a French couple, popular with an affluent expat crowd and known for delicious tartines (open sandwiches) and indulgent desserts. Licensed. Closed Sun evening and Mon. Expensive.
Ray Charly Corner of Petit Socco. A hole-in-the-wall diner – just a counter and a row of seats – serving burgers, chicken, egg and chips. Very cheap.
Restaurant Ahlen 8 Rue des Postes. Simple but well-cooked food – roast chicken, grilled beef, harira – and a warm welcome. Cheap.
Restaurant Andaluz 7 Rue du Commerce. In the first alley to the left off Rue de la Marine (the street running from the Petit Socco to the Grand Mosque). With a trio of tables, it is about as simple as it’s possible to be – and excellent, serving impeccably fried swordfish steaks and grilled brochettes. Cheap.
Restaurant Marhaba 26 Palais Ahannar, off Rue de la Kasbah at no. 67, just outside the Medina; see map of Tangier 0539 937927. A splendid old palace, stacked with antiques, and with music and good food. Set menus for 150dh and 190dh. Open lunch and dinner. Moderate to expensive.
Riad Tanja 2 Rue Amar Alilech, turn off Rue de Portugal near the American Legation 0539 333538. Small and intimate restaurant, stylishly and simply decorated, whose signature nouvelle cuisine Marocaine includes light vegetable salads, fish tajines and caramelized fruit desserts. Open to non-residents. Lunch and dinner, closed Mon. Reservation recommended. Expensive.
Ville Nouvelle
All these restaurants are shown on the map of Tangier City Centre, unless otherwise stated.
Anna e Paolo 17 Av Price Heritier, see map of Tangier, 0539 944617. Quite simply the best Italian cuisine in Tangier. Open lunch and dinner. Closed Sun. Moderate.
Casa España 11 Rue Jebha el Ouatania, by the Rembrandt Hôtel. Tangier’s Spanish club, with a 20 percent surcharge for nonmembers, but still reasonably good value with three different paellas (Valencian, seafood and vegetarian), plus such Iberian standards as kidneys in sherry, tortilla and, in season, Andalucian gazpacho. Moderate.
El Dorado 21 Rue Allal Ben Abdallah, near the Hôtel Chellah; see map of Tangier. Dependable Moroccan–Spanish cooking, with couscous on Fri and paella on Sun. Moderate.
El Korsan in the Hôtel el Minzah, 85 Rue de la Liberté 0539 935885. The hotel’s Moroccan restaurant has a reputation as one of the country’s best, serving authentic and traditional specialities to the accompaniment of a group of musicians. Expensive.
El Pescador 39 Rue Allal Ben Abdallah; see map of Tangier. A swanky Spanish restaurant with an inviting tapas bar at the rear. Lunch and dinner, closed Sun. Moderate to expensive.
Le Mangana Complex Dawliz, 42 Rue de Hollande 0539 333377. A stylish modern dining room serving mainly French cuisine with 80dh and 140dh set menus. Not as intimate as Relais de Paris next door, but with fantastic sea views. Moderate to expensive.
Otori Sushi 41 Av de la Résistance, see map of Tangier 0539 325533. Though lacking atmosphere, sushi lovers will be pleased to find Tangier’s international reputation manifest in quality maki rolls and by-the-piece sushi. Fresh fish arrives daily. Takeaway and delivery available. Expensive.
Relais de Paris Complex Dawliz, 42 Rue de Hollande 0539 331819, www.relaisdeparis.com. The current meeting place of choice for Tangier’s wheelers and dealers. Fine French cuisine including succulent grills and a set menu of 120dh. The Medina and sea views may make the expense worthwhile. Open lunch and dinner. Expensive.
Restaurant Africa 83 Rue de la Plage at the bottom of the hill, opposite Hôtel Valencia 0539 935436. A simply decorated and peaceful dining room known for its excellent value 55dh four course set menu. Licensed. Moderate.
Restaurant Agadir 21 Rue Prince Héritier, off Place de France. This small and friendly restaurant, run by a Tafraouti, with accomplished French and Moroccan cooking, is a particular favourite. Licensed. Moderate, with a 70dh set menu.
Restaurant Hassi Baida 83 Rue de la Plage. Recently renovated, bright, tiled restaurant serving fish, couscous, tajine and pizza. Moderate.
Restaurant le Coeur de Tanger 1 Rue Annoual, off Place de France (it’s above the Café Paris, though the entrance is on a side street). Moroccan dishes served in some style. Set menus of 140dh. Moderate to expensive.
Restaurant Number One 1 Bd Mohammed V, across the side street from the Rembrandt Hôtel 0539 941674. A restaurant and cocktail bar, with a French–Moroccan menu that attracts a business crowd at lunchtime (noon–3pm) and tends to be fairly quiet in the evenings (6.30–11pm). Expensive.
Restaurant Pagode Rue el Boussiri, just off Rue Prince Héritier 0539 938086. Possibly the best Chinese food in Tangier, though the service is pretty joyless. Expensive.
Restaurant Populaire Saveur Mediterannée On the steps leading down from Rue de la Liberté to the Fondouk Market. A small and popular diner specializing in fish. Closed Fri. Cheap.
Restaurant San Remo 15 Rue Ahmed Chaouki, a side street opposite the terrace-belvedere (see map of Tangier City Centre) on Bd Pasteur. Credible, good-value Spanish, French and Italian cooking, and with a cheaper pizzeria across the road. Moderate.
Rubis Grill 3 Rue Ibn Rochd, off Av Prince Moulay Abdallah. Long established, serving Spanish and other European cuisines; the candle-lit hacienda decor is a bit over the top, but the food and service are exemplary. Moderate.
Seafront
All restaurants are marked on the map of Tangier unless otherwise stated.
Hôtel Biarritz 104 Av Mohammed VI, (see map of Tangier City Centre). One of the nicer hotel restaurants, with old-style service and a limited but reliable menu which consists mostly of Moroccan and French cuisine. Moderate.
Hôtel Marco Polo corner of Av Mohammed VI and Rue el Antaki. Very noisy ground-floor bar, with restaurant on the first and top floors, and views of the bay. Serves generous helpings of Moroccan cuisine and often has seafood specials. Moderate.
L’Marsa Hôtel L’Marsa, 92 Av Mohammed VI (see map of Tangier City Centre). Superb pizzas and spaghetti, with home-made ice cream to follow, served (slowly) on a roof terrace, patio or inside. Moderate, with an 80dh set menu.
Restaurant Miramar Av Mohammed VI, opposite the Hôtel Rif 0539 944033. A beach restaurant with a varied menu of Moroccan, Spanish and seafood dishes. There’s a separate lively tapas bar at the rear. Noon–midnight. Moderate to expensive.
Restaurant Sable d’Or Av Mohammed VI, on the beach opposite the Hôtel Solazur 0539 946441. Tangier’s only curry house, with Indian dishes for vegetarians and meat-eaters, including a pretty good chicken tikka masala. Expensive.
Restaurant Valencia 6 Av Youssef Ben Tachfine 0539 945146. A simply furnished fish restaurant, very popular with locals and tourists. Closed Tues. Moderate.
Out of town
You’ll need a car to get to all the below recommendations.
Chez Abdou 17km out of town, on the coast road leading south towards Asilah, in the so-called Fôret Diplomatique. Handy for lunch, and recommended for seafood. Expensive.
Club Le Mirage near the Caves of Hercules in the area known as Ashakar, 5km south of the Cap Spartel lighthouse 0539 333332, www.lemirage-tanger.com. An international-style restaurant located within a long-established and popular resort. The food is excellent – saffron flavoured soupe de poisson and curried langoustine brochettes are amongst the signature dishes – and so are the views. Expensive.
Le Riad Restaurant 7km along the Malabata road, amid the trees to the right. Serves a selection of tajines and brochettes and makes for a pleasant lunchtime stop. Moderate.
Villa Josephine 231 Rue de la Montagne, Sidi Masmoudi 0539 334535, www.villajosephine-tanger.com. Fantastic Straits views from the outdoor terrace, and serving up some of the best French and Moroccan cuisine in Tangier. There are also 11 opulent guest rooms, each with their own fireplace and balcony, starting from 2500dh per double. See box La Montagne and Villa Josephine.
Cafés
Tangier has a wealth of attractive cafés. There are also some excellent patisseries, among which three in particular are rated by the cognoscenti: Matisse at Rue Allal Ben Abdallah (near Hôtel Chellah; map of Tangier), which is the poshest; Rahmouni, at 35 Rue du Prince Moulay Abdallah (see map of Tangier City Centre), which is the oldest; and the upstart Traiteur al Mouatamid Bnou Abbad, at 16 Rue al Mouatamid Ibn Abadd (see map of Tangier). All the following are shown on the Tangier City Centre map, unless otherwise stated.
Café de Paris Place de France. Tangier’s most famous café, from its conspiratorial past. Still a staple meeting place for expats and usually a good place to track down English newspapers in the morning.
Café Hafa La Marshan; see map of Tangier & directions. This clifftop café is the perfect late-afternoon locale to gaze across the Straits and write your postcards.
Café Metropole 27 Bd Pasteur, next to the synagogue. This serves the best café au lait in town and pastries can be bought across the road at Pâtisserie Le Petit Prince and consumed at your table.
Café Tingis Petit Socco; see map of Tangier Medina. A favorite haunt of Tennessee Williams with its shaded terrace and atmospheric interior and a more attractive choice than next door Café Central, where refurbishment has replaced the dingy charm that attracted Burroughs with characterless modern decor.
Cafeteria Katerina Rue Lafayette, behind Hôtel Chellah; see map of Tangier. A relaxed spot for snacks and refreshments on a quiet street. Their delicious croque monsieur is particularly recommended.
Dolcy’s On the eastern end of Bd Pasteur. Central and friendly, a great spot for breakfast with eggs, toasted sandwiches, and fresh juices.
Bars
A decadent past has taken its toll on Tangier’s bars and most of those that do survive have fallen into a rather bland seediness. The better options are in or alongside the older hotels, supplemented in summer by the beach bars, which stay open till 1am or so (though take care in this area after dark). All these are shown on the Tangier City Centre map, unless otherwise stated.
Atlas Bar 30 Rue Prince Héritier, across the road from the Hôtel Atlas. Small, friendly tapas pub open nightly. Proudly in business since 1928 and has barely changed since – the intimate dive-bar atmosphere is still fully intact.
Caid’s Bar in the Hôtel el Minzah, 85 Rue de la Liberté. Long the chi-chi place to meet over very pricey drinks. Over the bar is the centrepiece of the ritzy décor, a grand painting of Caid Sir Harry Maclean, former commander in chief of the sultan’s army.
Carrousel Bar 6 Rue Khalil Metrane, off Rue Prince Héritier. Comfortable British-run wine bar, in business since 1936.
Dean’s Bar Rue d’Amérique du Sud. The closest bar to the Medina – a tiny shop-room that was once the haunt of Tennessee Williams, Francis Bacon and Ian Fleming. It is now frequented more or less exclusively by Moroccans although tourists are welcomed. For more on Dean himself, see St Andrew's Church.
Hôtel Marco Polo Av Mohammed VI; see map of Tangier. The ground floor is popular with tourists, especially hard-drinking Scandinavians and Germans getting through its range of European beers.
Mondial 52 Av Mohammed VI; off map, Tangier. Beachside tapas bar with a separate entry from the adjoining nightclub. A not-so-intimidating place for women travellers, though the drinks are expensive. Noon–midnight.
Tanger Inn 16 Rue Magellan, below the Hôtel el Muniria Hôtel el Muniria. One of Tangier’s last surviving International Zone relics, with photos on the wall of Burroughs, Ginsberg and Kerouac while they were staying at the hotel above. Daily 9pm–2am, but liveliest Thurs, Fri and Sat nights.
The Pub 4 Rue Sorolla. A British-themed pub, with hunting scenes on the walls and bar food, but it’s not quite the real thing. Daily 9pm–1am.
Discos and clubs
The principal areas for discos is the grid of streets south of Place de France and Boulevard Pasteur and the beach. Admission is usually 100dh, drinks are two or three times regular bar prices and be careful leaving late at night as the streets hereabouts are none too safe; the best idea is to tip the doorman 5dh to call a taxi. All these venues are shown on the Tangier City Centre map, unless otherwise stated.
Borsalino 30 Rue du Prince Moulay Abdallah. A small and usually quite lively disco, with a mixed crowd, and loud pop music.
Mondial 52 Av Mohammed VI, on the beach; off map, Tangier. Catering to a young, modern crowd of twenty-something Moroccans and weekender Europeans, with two resident DJs and regular guest DJs. Open nightly 11pm–5am.
Morocco Palace 13 Rue du Prince Moulay Abdallah. A clear winner among Tangier’s nightspots, this strange, sometimes slightly manic place puts on traditional Moroccan music and dance (sometimes belly-dancing) nightly from around 9pm until 4am. Customers are predominantly Moroccan and expect a good show.
Radio Club 30 Rue du Prince Moulay Abdallah. Slightly seedy club sometimes featuring Moroccan bands.
Regine Club Rue el Mansour Dahbi (opposite the Roxy Cinema); see map of Tangier. Mainstream disco, larger and a little cheaper than most. Open from 10pm.
Scott’s Rue el Moutanabi (Rue Sanlucar). Traditionally (though not exclusively) a gay disco, this is worth a look if only for its very particular choice of paintings – Berber boys in Highland military uniform. Usually quiet until after midnight.
Snob Av Mohammed VI, on the beach, across from Hôtel Ramada; (off map, Tangier). A new stylish lounge club with state-of-the-art audio and lighting catering to a trendy crowd.
Concerts and films
Both traditional and pop/rock concerts come to Tangier from time to time. Check with the tourist office and look out for posters advertising the larger events. The old Spanish bullring, out beyond the bus station in the Ville Nouvelle, has been converted into an open-air concert hall and is a venue for occasional large events. Cultural events are also hosted by the American Legation and the Institut Français de Tangier; the latter organizes the Tangier Music Festival (see Listings) as well as various concerts and theatrical performances at the small Salle Beckett theatre on Rue Ibn Naffiy off Rue Allal Ben Abdallah. You can pick up a programme for Institut Français events from Galerie Delacroix.
One of only a few cinemas still operating in Tangier is the Cinema Rif (www.cinemathequedetanger.com), on the Grand Socco, which has been renovated and reborn thanks to the not-for-profit organization Cinémathèque de Tanger, the dream of Moroccan-born photographer and artist Yto Barrada. The cinema aims to become the focal point for cinema culture for all of North Africa. Currently there are weekly showings of new releases, documentaries and classics.
Up-to-date information on local events can be found in the weekly publication, Les Nouvelles du Nord, available in cafés and hotel receptions on Friday or Saturday.
Galleries, shops and stalls
Besides from the Galerie d’Art Contemporain and Marchan Art Gallery other notable galleries include: The Galerie Delacroix, 86 Rue de la Liberté (Tues–Sun 11am–1pm & 4–8pm), which usually has interesting exhibitions of contemporary art and, for local artists, the Volubilis Art Gallery, 6 Sidi Boukouja (in the kasbah; Tues–Sun 10.30am–1pm & 3.30–7pm), under the very friendly management of Mohamed and Karla Raiss el Fenni, who also manage the Volubilis Boutique in the Petit Socco. Up-to-date listings and information on various other small galleries can be found in the window of Bab el Fen, a well stocked art supply shop at 25 Rue ibn Rochd across from the Rembrandt Hôtel.
Many of the Tangier market stalls and stores are eminently avoidable, geared to selling tourist goods that wouldn’t pass muster elsewhere. But a few are worthwhile, unique, or both; a half-hour preliminary browse at the more “fixed price” outlets on Boulevard Pasteur is useful for establishing roughly what you should pay for things. Threre’s a massive flea market (daily, but best on Sundays), out of town at Casa Barata, reached by shared grand taxi from the Grand Socco or bus #16 from the bus and train stations. For supermarkets see Listings.
Crafts and souvenirs
Bazaar Tindouf 64 Rue de la Liberté, opposite the Hôtel el Minzah. One of the better-quality junk/antique shops, with a good array of cushion-carpets and old postcards. Bargaining is essential.
Chakkara Bazaar Rue Amarh, below the kasbah. Little more than a hole in the wall, but Chakkara has folders full of old photos, postcards, and various other visual artefacts, even a few rare etchings.
Ensemble Artisanal Rue Belgique (left-hand side, going west from the Place de France). A government-run store displaying modern Moroccan crafts. Prices are (more or less) fixed – a useful first call to get an idea of quality and costs before bargaining elsewhere. Open daily except Fri, 9am–1pm & 3–7pm.
Marrakech la Rouge 50 Rue Siaghin. Large and not-too-pushy bazaar selling rugs, jewellery, pottery, antique weaponry and leather, wood and metal crafts. Open daily.
Rue Touahin first right off Rue Siaghin, entering the Medina from the Grand Socco. This line of jewellery stalls may turn up something appealing, though don’t take silver, gold or most stones at face value: judge on aesthetics.
Volubilis Boutique 15 Place Petit Socco. A usually interesting mix of traditional Moroccan and Western fashion.
Listings
Airlines Royal Air Maroc, 1 Pl de France 0539 379507 or 0900 00800. Air France 0539 936477. KLM 0539 938926 and Lufthansa 0539 931327 all have offices at 7 Rue du Mexique.
Banks Most are grouped along Bd Pasteur/Bd Mohammed V. BMCE has branches at 21 Bd Pasteur and in the Grand Socco, both with ATMs. SGMB also has a Grand Socco branch with ATM. WAFA Bank has a bureau de change at 22 Bd Pasteur, (Mon–Fri 8am–6pm, Sat 9am–1pm). WAFA also represents Western Union, as does the post office. Most banks in Tangier will cash travellers’ cheques, a service not widely offered in many other parts of the country.
Books The long-established Librairie des Colonnes at 54 Bd Pasteur (Mon–Sat 9.30am–1pm & 4.30–7pm) has some good French books on Tangier and Morocco, and a small selection of English-language books.
Car rental Avis, 54 Bd Pasteur 0539 934646; Budget, Gare de Ville 0539 901045; Europcar, 87 Bd Mohammed V 0539 941938; Hertz, 36 Bd Mohammed V 0539 322165; National, Résidence Lina, Bd Mohammed V 0539 325159. Avis, Budget, Europcar, Hertz and National also have desks at the airport. Local agencies are scattered around Av Mohammed V.
Car repairs Most repairs can be undertaken – or arranged – by Garage Lafayette, 27 Rue Mohammed Abdou (0539 932887).
Consulates UK, Trafalgar House, 9 Rue Amerique du Sud 0539 936939. There is no US consulate in Tangier (nearest US diplomatic representation is in Rabat).
Ferry companies Comanav, 43 Av Abou Aala el Maari 0539 934096 (to Algeciras, Sète and sometimes Genoa); Comarit, Av Mohammed VI 0539 320032 (to Algeciras and Sète); EuroFerrys, 31 Av de la Résistance 0539 322253 (to Algeciras); FRS, 18 Rue el Farabi 0539 942612 (to Algeciras, Tarifa and Gibraltar); IMTC, 2 Bd Pasteur 0539 336002 (to Algeciras); Limadet, 13 Rue Prince Moulay Abdallah 0539 933621 (to Algeciras); LME c/o Comarit (to Algeciras); Nautas, in the port 0539 934463 (to Algeciras); Trasmediterranea c/o Limadet (to Algeciras).
Festivals Tanjazz Festival features more than 100 international artists for four days in June; see www.tanjazz.org. For other events check with the tourist office or pick up an Institut Français programme.
Golf Tangier Royal Golf Club, BP 41, Tangier 0539 944484, (18 holes); and Cabo Negro Royal Golf, BP 696 G Tetouan 0539 978303.
Hammam The Hôtel el Minzah’s Wellness Centre is open to non-residents. For 150dh you get a traditional wash and scrub from an attendant and can indulge yourself in steam and soap all day long.
Hospitals Clinique Assalam, 10 Av de la Paix (0539 322558), is regarded as the best private clinic in Tangier for medical emergencies. The government-run Hospital Mohammed V (0539 938056) is on the road to the airport. Closer to the city centre is Hôpital Espagnol 0539 931018 on Rue de l’Hôpital Espagnol near Place Oued El Makhazine. For a private ambulance, call 0539 954040 or 0539 946976.
Internet access Cybercafé Adam, 4 Rue Ibn Rochd (off Bd Pasteur); Euronet, 5 Rue Ahmed Chaouki (off Bd Pasteur); Club Internet 3000, 27 Rue el Antaki (also sells computer accessories); ViaWeb, 48 Rue Allal ben Abdallah, in a teléboutique opposite the Hôtel Chellah.
Newspapers English-language newspapers are sold outside the post office, in various stores along Bd Pasteur or Av Mohammed VI, and by vendors around the Café Paris.
Pharmacies There are several English-speaking pharmacies in the Pl de France (try the Pharmacie Pasteur, next door to the Café Paris, or the Pharmacie de Paris opposite) and along Bd Pasteur. A roster of all-night and weekend pharmacies is displayed in every pharmacie window. Pharmacists will recommend local doctors.
Photographic equipment and developing Studio Flash, 79 Rue de la Liberté.
Police The Brigade Touristique has its HQ at the former train station by the port (0539 931129). There are smaller police posts on the Grand Socco and in the kasbah. Emergency 19.
Post The main PTT is at 33 Bd Mohammed V and has a poste restante service (Mon–Fri 8am–6pm & Sat 8am–noon).
Supermarkets Acima, with a liquor outlet, is on Rue al Hariri (off Pl des Nations). Open daily 9am–9pm. Marjane Hypermarket, selling everything from groceries (including bacon) and alcohol to clothing and household goods, is on the edge of the city on the N1 road to the airport and Asilah.
Travel agencies Voyages Marco Polo, 72 Av Mohammed VI 0539 934345; and Koutoubia, 112 bis Av Mohammed VI 0539 935540. American Express is represented by Voyages Schwartz, 54 Bd Pasteur 0539 374837 (Mon–Fri 9am–5pm).
Moving on
Travelling on into Morocco from Tangier is simplest either by train (the lines run to Meknes–Fes–Oujda or to Rabat–Casablanca–Marrakesh; all trains stop at Asilah en route), or, if you are heading east to Tetouan, by bus or shared grand taxi. Leaving the country, ferries run to Algeciras, Gibraltar, Tarifa, Genoa (Italy) and Sète (France). Note that Tarifa is not an international port and therefore only accepts passengers holding EU passports.
By train
Tangier’s train station, Tanger Ville, is 2km east of town on the continuation of Boulevard Mohammed V, and only 300m or so off the eastern end of the beach. Services inside the station include an ATM, Budget car rental desk, small bookshop and a café. The best way to get to it is by petit taxi (15dh or so); it is also served by bus #16 from the bus station but not by any buses from the city centre. Alternatively, bus #13 from the port goes to Tangier’s second station, Tanger Morora, 4km down the Tetouan road, which is served by all trains out of Tanger Ville.
The best train service from Tangier by far is the night train to Marrakesh, with very comfortable couchettes – a great way to arrive refreshed the next morning. For further information on destinations and frequencies see Travel Details.
By bus and grand taxi
CTM long-distance buses leave from the port entrance (see map of Tangier), including those for Tetouan and Chefchaouen. If you have missed their daily (noon) direct bus to Chefchaouen but still want to push on, an alternative is to go to Tetouan and then find a bus or grand taxi going to Chefchaouen. All other long-distance services start from the gare routière, 2km from the centre of town and easily reached by petit taxi (15dh from the port). Useful departures include, again, Tetouan and Chefchaouen (the latter doesn’t involve a change of bus, though you stop in Tetouan for twenty minutes; don’t pay extra to hustlers there who might just suggest your ticket covers only a “reservation fare” for the Chefchaouen stage).
Grands taxis also mostly leave from the gare routière. Regular shared runs (ask for a plassa) are to Asilah, Tetouan and Fnideq. Occasionally you may find a taxi direct to the Ceuta border, 2km beyond Fnideq. Shared grands taxis to Fnideq and Ksar es Seghir also depart from Rue du Portugal off Rue de la Plage at the southernmost corner of the Medina.
For destinations in the immediate vicinity of Tangier, you may need to charter a grand taxi at the rank on the Grand Socco, though it’s possible to get to places like the Caves of Hercules or Cap Malabata by shared grand taxi or city bus.
By ferry and hydrofoil
Although ferries often depart an hour or so late, you should check in at the port at least one hour before official sailing time to get through the chaos of official business. Hydrofoil departures, on the other hand, are usually on time.
At the ferry and hydrofoil terminal (Gare Maritime Ouest), you have to get an embarkation card and departure card from the départ desk of the ferry companies. Arrival and departure information is displayed on screens in the terminal building. Should your ferry or hydrofoil depart from terminals 1 or 2, present your cards, along with your passport, to the Controle Police et Douane (immigration and customs police) at the far end of the building. If you are departing from terminals 3, 4 or 5 you need to present yourself at a separate, smaller immigration and customs building located about 50m outside, alongside the port wall. Arrive later than an hour before official departure time and you may find the visa police have already left – which means waiting for the next ferry.
Two periods to avoid the ferries from Tangier are the end of the Easter week (Semana Santa) holiday, and the last week of August, when the ferries can be full for days on end with Moroccan workers returning to northern Europe. During these periods, reservations are essential.
Details of ferry and hydrofoil routes are to be found in the “Basics” section of this book. Tickets and timetables can be obtained from any travel agent in Tangier or from the ferry company’s agents (listed in Ferry operators).
By air
Tangier’s airport, Ibn Batouta, is 15km west of the city (information 0539 393720). Some hotels will organize a transfer for you, otherwise the best way to reach the airport is by grand taxi from the Grand Socco (120dh is the standard rate, though you may need to bargain hard to get it).
West of Tangier: the Caves of Hercules and around
The Caves of Hercules (Grottes d’Hercule) are something of a symbol for Tangier, with their strange sea window, shaped like a map of Africa. The name, like Hercules’ legendary founding of Tangier, is purely fanciful, but the caves, 16km outside the city and above the Atlantic Beach, make an attractive excursion. If you feel like staying for a few days by the sea, the beach can be a pleasant base, too; outside of July and August only stray groups of visitors share the long surf beaches. Take care with currents, however, which can be very dangerous even near the shore.
Cap Spartel and the caves
The most interesting route to the caves and Cap Spartel runs around and above the coast via the quarter known as La Montagne. Follow this road for around 14km and you’ll reach a short turn-off to the lighthouse at Africa’s most northwesterly promontory, Cap Spartel, a dramatic and fertile point, known to the Greeks and Romans as the “Cape of the Vines”. You can visit the lighthouse and sometimes, if the keeper is around, enter and climb it. There is a pleasant restaurant here (open summer only) with ocean views.
To the south of Cap Spartel begins the vast and wild Atlantic Beach, known locally as Robinson Plage. It is broken only by a rocky spit – 5km from the Cape, and home to the Caves of Hercules. Natural formations, occupied in prehistoric times, they are most striking for a man-made addition – thousands of disc-shaped erosions created by centuries of quarrying for millstones. There were still people cutting stones here for a living until the 1920s, but by that time their place was beginning to be taken by professional guides and discreet sex hustlers; it must have made an exotic brothel. Today, there’s a standard admission charge of 5dh (9am–sunset), and you’ll probably get some would-be guide attaching themselves to you in the hope of payment too. There are a number of restaurants surrounding the car park, serving grilled fish caught from the rocks below.
Practicalities
If you have your own transport, you can head out to the caves via La Montagne and make a round trip by continuing along the coast road, and then taking either the minor road through Jabila or the faster main road (N1), back to Tangier. If you don’t, it shouldn’t cost you more than 100dh including waiting time to charter a grand taxi from the Grand Socco. Alternatively, the #2 bus, from St Andrew’s Church by the Grand Socco, goes there on summer weekends only; at other times it stops at the nearby village of Jabila, a long walk from the caves – but you’re better off alighting before then, at Ziyatin on the old airport road, from where there are connecting taxis to the caves. You can also get to Ziyatin in shared grands taxis from St Andrew’s Church.
Close by the caves, on the same rocky spit is the Le Mirage (0539 333332, www.lemirage-tanger.com; 1500–2499dh (£120-199/$196-327/€132-219)), an upmarket clifftop complex of 27 bungalows with full facilities including swimming pool and satellite TV. The restaurant and piano bar are open to non-residents and make a very pleasant, albeit expensive, lunch stop if you are on a day’s outing from Tangier. Across from Le Mirage is a campsite, Camping Ashakar (0674 719419), a pleasant, well-wooded site with 13 small bungalows (350–499dh (£28-40/$46-65/€30-44)), showers, café, restaurant and small shop, but really only for those with transport.
East of Tangier: Cap Malabata and Ksar es Seghir
The best beaches in the immediate vicinity of Tangier are to be found at Cap Malabata, where much wealthy villa development has been taking place, but long open swathes of sandy beach can still be found. Beyond here, Ksar es Seghir offers a pleasant day by the sea, or a stop on the coast road to Ceuta.
The Port Tanger Mediterranée near the village of Dalia, 20km from Ceuta is the new commercial-only port that, together with a new road and rail network, has transformed the rugged coastline into a busy trade hub.
Cap Malabata
The bay east of Tangier is flanked by long stretches of beach and a chain of elderly villas and new apartment blocks until you reach the “complexe touristique” of Cap Malabata, accessible on bus #15 or #16, or by petit taxi, which has a couple of intermittently open hotels and some attractive stretches of beach. Further on, an old Portuguese fort on an outcrop makes a good destination for coastal walks. Plans to build a rail tunnel between Cap Malabata and Punta Paloma in Spain have been in foetal stages for over a decade and despite continuing opposition from the EU, the proposed tunnel remains a major interest on Morocco’s international agenda.
Ksar es Seghir and Djebel Moussa
KSAR ES SEGHIR, halfway to Ceuta, makes a pleasant stop, and can be reached by shared grand taxi from Rue de Portugal in Tangier, or on any bus running between Tangier and Fnideq. The picturesque little fishing port attracts a fair number of Moroccan beach campers in summer, but few Europeans. The centre of town is the junction where the roads to Tangier, Tetouan and Fnideq all meet, and where grands taxis from Tangier will drop you. Just across the river from the junction lie the remains of a medieval Islamic town and Portuguese fortress (there’s a plan of the site posted up by the west side of the bridge). Legend has it that Tariq Ibn Ziyad invaded Spain from here in 711. Ksar es Seghir has been of specific interest to archeologists, being positioned at the meeting point of three distinct terrains: The Habt (Atlantic lowlands), Jabala (sandstone hills), and the Rif mountains, and consequently remained an important settlement throughout the region’s early history.
The Café-Restaurant Diamant Bleu (open summer only) has rooms overlooking the sea, and there’s a campsite (also summer only) by the beach just east of the ruins. More upmarket accommodation can be found 12km before the town at the Hôtel Tarifa. There are a few café-restaurants by the beach, but the best places in town to eat are the Restaurant L’Achiri by the taxi station, Restaurant el Ghoroub just up the hill and Restaurant Borj Wad Ghalala on the eastern edge of town overlooking the beach. Banque Populaire is the only bank in town and has an ATM.
From Ksar es Seghir the road to Fnideq climbs around the windy Djebel Moussa – the mountain that, with Gibraltar, forms the so-called Pillars of Hercules. According to legend, Hercules separated Europe from Africa with a blow of his sword during his fight with the giant Antaeus, and seen from a plane Gibraltar and Djebel Moussa really do look like two pillars. They also produce remarkable thermal currents, speeding passage for migratory birds at this, the shortest crossing between Africa and Europe. A spring or autumn visit should ensure sightings, as up to two hundred species make their way across the Straits.
Asilah
The first town south of Tangier – and first stop on the train line – ASILAH is one of the most elegant of the old Portuguese Atlantic ports, small, easy to manage, and exceptionally clean. First impressions are of wonderful square stone ramparts, flanked by palms, and an outstanding beach – an immense sweep of sand stretching to the north halfway to Tangier. The town’s Medina is one of the most attractive in the country, colourwashed in pastel shades, and with a series of murals painted for the town’s International Festival, first held in 1978. It takes place in August, attracting performers from around the world with a programme usually including art, dance, film, music and poetry over the course of three to four weeks.
Arrival and information
The train station is 2km north of the town; there is occasionally a taxi to meet arrivals but don’t count on it. It’s an easy enough walk into town, so long as you’re not weighed down with bags. Buses arrive at the gare routière on the road to Larache (N1) just on the edge of town, while coming from Tangier or Larache by grand taxi, you’ll probably be dropped nearby, on Avenue Moulay Ismail. From either of these, it’s a short walk to Place Mohammed V, a small square in the centre of town, not far from the Medina’s main gate, Bab el Kasaba.
Internet access is available on Avenue Hassan II opposite the al fresco eateries. Finally, ask directions to the town’s small hammam, tucked down an alleyway in the north of the Medina. Unusually, the keeper charges Westerners a group rate and gives you the place to yourselves.
Accommodation
Asilah can be packed during its festival but at other times, even high season, there’s usually space in the dozen or so pensions and hotels. Campsites, open in summer only, are usually found in the area around the train station, but many have recently closed due to vague governmental zoning laws. Campervans are also usually allowed to park for the night in an open parking area just outside the Medina wall at the end of Rue Moulay Hassan Ben Mehdi – tip the gardien 10dh.
Al Khaima Hôtel Route de Tanger, 1km north of town on the Tangier road, across from the beach 0539 417428, 0539 417566. An efficient, modern hotel built around a pool. It has a pleasant bar, open to non-residents, which can be a little noisy in high season. 500–699dh (£40-56/$65-92/€44-61)
Hôtel Azayla 20 Rue Ibn Rochd 0539 416717. The newest hotel in town and just a short stroll from the Medina or the beach. Good-value bright, clean rooms with a/c, and some extra large rooms with a sitting area. Free wi-fi. Breakfast included. 350–499dh (£28-40/$46-65/€30-44)
Hôtel Belle Vue Rue Hassan Ben Tabit 0539 417747. A well-located hotel with slightly bizarre decor, but reasonably priced, with clean, en-suite rooms. 100–199dh (£8-16/$13-26/€9-18)
Hôtel Ennasr 3 Rue Ahmed M’dem (no phone). The cheapest option in town. Simple rooms around a palmed courtyard. 100–199dh (£8-16/$13-26/€9-18)
Hôtel las Palmas 7 Rue Imam Assili 0534 267648 . A cheap hotel with slightly grubby rooms, all en suite and some with balconies. 100–199dh (£8-16/$13-26/€9-18)
Hôtel Mansour 49 Av Mohammed V 0539 417390. Has long been one of the better mid-range hotels in town, with immaculate rooms and an English-speaking owner who also runs a handy travel agency, Jaouharat el Haram Voyages. Breakfast included. 100–199dh (£8-16/$13-26/€9-18)
Hôtel Marhaba 9 Rue Zellaca 0539 417144. A friendly place, close to the town gate, with small, simple rooms. Good value for money, though prices increase in summer. 100–199dh (£8-16/$13-26/€9-18)
Hôtel Oued el Makhazine Av Melilla 0539 417090, 0394 17500. A pleasant and comfortable hotel, it may not be the most exciting in town, but it’s close to the seafront. 350–499dh (£28-40/$46-65/€30-44)
Hôtel Patio de la Luna 12 Rue Zellaca 0539 416074, 0539 416540. A small house, beautifully converted into a tastefully decorated guesthouse, with a peaceful patio and garden – very central. 350–499dh (£28-40/$46-65/€30-44)
Hôtel Sahara 9 Rue Tarfaya 0539 417185. A little way from the action, behind the Cinéma Magali, and not all rooms have external windows, but it’s quiet, clean and comfortable. Hot showers 5dh extra. 100–199dh (£8-16/$13-26/€9-18)
Hôtel Zelis 10 Rue Mansour Eddahbi 0539 417029, 0539 417098. Still one of the better hotels in town but not especially attractive. Bright, airy rooms, some with ocean views. Has a swimming pool, café and internet access. The restaurant, however, is not recommended. Breakfast included. 500–699dh (£40-56/$65-92/€44-61)
Mounia Apartments 14 Rue Moulay Hassan Ben Mehdi 0539 417815. A range of apartments with kitchenettes, next to Restaurant Casa Garcia on the promenade. The owner has other apartments elsewhere. 350–999dh (£56-80/$92-131/€61-88)
Pension Karam 40 Rue Mansour Eddahbi 0539 417626. A small, homely pension close to the seafront (and behind the prominent Hôtel Oued el Makhazine). 200–349dh (£16-28/$26-46/€18-30)
The Town
Before the tourists and the International Festival, Asilah was just a small fishing port, quietly stagnating after the indifference of Spanish colonial administration. Whitewashed and cleaned up, it now has a prosperous feeling to it: the Grand Mosque, for example, has been rebuilt and doubled in size, there’s a new paved seaside promenade and property developments, including a marina and golf course estate, are popping up either side of the town. As with Tangier, the beach is the main focus of life in summer. The most popular stretches are to the north of the town, out towards the train station. For more isolated strands, walk south, past the Medina ramparts.
The ramparts and Medina
The Medina’s circuit of towers and ramparts – built by the Portuguese military architect Botacca in the sixteenth century – are pleasant to wander around. They include two main gates: Bab el Homar, on Avenue Hassan II, and Bab el Kasaba. If you enter by the latter, you pass the Grand Mosque and the Centre Hassan II des Rencontres Internationales, an arts venue and accommodation centre for the festival, with a cool open courtyard.
Further on is a small square overlooked by the “red tower”, El Hamra. This is used for exhibitions, particularly during the festival. Turn right past here, along a tiny network of streets, and down towards the platform overlooking the sea, and you’ll come upon at least a half-dozen murals painted (and subsequently repainted) during the festivals; they form an intriguing mix of fantasy-representational art and geometric designs. Keep an eye out for the small art galleries of local artists which are scattered around the Medina.
Palais de Raisuli
The town’s focal sight – stretching over the sea at the heart of the Medina – is the Palais de Raisuli, built in 1909 with forced tribal labour by one Er Raisuli, a local bandit. One of the strangest figures to emerge from what was a bizarre period of Moroccan government, he began his career as a cattle rustler, achieved notoriety with a series of kidnappings and ransoms (including the British writer Walter Harris and a Greek-American millionaire, Perdicaris, who was bailed out by Teddy Roosevelt), and was eventually appointed governor over practically all the tribes of northwest Morocco. Harris described his captivity in Morocco That Was as an “anxious time”, made more so by being confined in a small room with a headless corpse. Despite this, captor and captive formed a friendship, Harris finding Raisuli a “mysterious personage, half-saint, half-blackguard”, and often entertaining him later in Tangier.
Another British writer, Rosita Forbes, visited Raisuli in his palace in 1924, later writing his biography. Raisuli told Forbes that he made murderers walk to their death from the palace windows – a 27-metre drop to the rocks. One man, he said, had turned back to him, saying, “Thy justice is great, Sidi, but these stones are more merciful.”
The palace overhangs the sea ramparts towards the far end of the Medina (away from the beach). It is not officially open to visitors but if you’re interested – the interior is worth seeing – knock or enlist the help of a local and you may strike lucky with the caretaker.
Church of San Bartolome and around
At the junction of Avenue Mohammed V and Avenue Prince Héritier, is the Church of San Bartolome, built by Franciscan priests from Galicia, in northwest Spain. The cool and airy colonial-Spanish-style interior is complemented by the nuns’ own small chapel in Moorish style, with prayers common to Islam and Christianity carved in Arabic. One of the few church bells allowed to be used in Morocco is rung for Mass at 11am on Sundays and the sisters, from a teaching order founded by Mary Ward in Yorkshire in 1585, train local girls in dressmaking, embroidery and literacy. Visitors are welcome at any time – ring the bell by the door alongside the church.
There’s a villagers’ market, at its liveliest on Thursday and Sunday held on Avenue Moulay Ismail below the grand taxi stand.
Eating, drinking and nightlife
The town’s most prominent restaurants are El Oceano (also called Casa Pepe) and Al Kasabah, side by side in the Place Zellaca, just outside the ramparts and further along the seafront, Casa Gracia. All have outdoor tables and Spanish-style fish and seafood dishes. Café-Restaurant Le Pont and El Espigón, also on the seafront and again specializing in fish, are slightly cheaper. In the town, the Restaurant Sevilla, near the Hôtel Las Palmas at 18 Av Imam Assili, serves generous helpings of Spanish-style dishes, and there is a string of small eateries, including Restaurant Rabie, on Avenue Hassan II opposite the Grand Mosque, with tables outside under the shade of large eucalyptus trees.
In summer, there are discos at the Al Khaima Hôtel.
Mzoura
If you have an interest in ancient sites, you might devote a half-day to explore the prehistoric stone circle of Mzoura, south of Asilah. The site, whose name means “Holy Place” in Arabic, originally comprised a tumulus, assumed to be the tomb of some early Mauritanian king, enclosed by an elliptical circle of some 167 standing stones. It was excavated in 1935 and the mound is now reduced to a series of watery hollows. There are photographs of Mzoura, pre-excavation, in the archaeological museum in Tetouan.
To reach Mzoura, follow the N1 south of Asilah for 16km, then turn left along the R417 towards Tetouan. After crossing the railway line, and 4km from the junction with the N1, turn left by the Somepi petrol station and onto a side road signposted El Yamini (Tnine Sidi Lyamani). From here the site is 5km northeast, across a confusing network of sandy tracks; it’s a good idea to enlist a guide at El Yamini.
Larache and Lixus
LARACHE is a relaxed, easy-going town, its summer visitors primarily Moroccan tourists who come to enjoy the beaches to the north of the estuary of the River Loukos. You’ll see as many women around as men – a reassuring feeling for women travellers looking for a low-key spot to bathe. Nearby, and accessible, are the ruins of ancient Lixus, legendary site of the Gardens of the Hesperides.
Larache was the main port of the northern Spanish zone and, though the central Plaza de España has since become Place de la Libération, it still bears much of its former stamp. There are faded old Spanish hotels, Spanish-run restaurants and Spanish bars, even an active Spanish cathedral (Mass Sat 7pm, Sun 11am) for the small colony who still work at the docks. In its heyday it was quite a metropolis, publishing its own Spanish newspaper and journal, and drawing a cosmopolitan population that included the French writer Jean Genet, who spent the last decade of his life here and is buried in the old Spanish cemetery found to the southwest of town.
Before its colonization in 1911, Larache was a small trading port. Its activities limited by dangerous offshore sandbars, the port-town eked out a living by building pirate ships made of wood from the nearby Forest of Mamora for the “Barbary Corsairs” of Salé and Rabat.
Today, there are major building projects underway on the outskirts of town including a government-sponsored resort, Port Lixus. This and similar projects in Asilah are demonstrative of a new initiative (Vision 2010) to reinvent Morocco’s Atlantic coast as a holiday hot spot.
Arrival and information
Long-distance buses, including CTM, use the town bus station, just off Rue Moulay Mohammed Ben Abdullah. There are a few banks around Place de la Libération with ATMs, but no tourist office.
Accommodation
Larache has some decent accommodation and in summer, it’s a good idea to book ahead. Caravans and campervans are accommodated at Centre d’Acceuil or Aire de Repos (0539 521069), on the N1 road towards Ksar el Kebir (the main road into town coming from the toll road) the latter of which has showers, toilets and a restaurant.
Hôtel Cervantes 3 Rue Tarik Ibnou Ziad, off Pl de la Libération 0539 910874. Don’t be put off by the unappealing paintwork – this is a friendly little place, with comfortable enough rooms and shared hot showers. 100–199dh (£8-16/$13-26/€9-18)
Hôtel España Pl de la Libération/entrance at 6 Av Hassan II 0539 913195, 0539 915628. The Grand Hôtel in Spanish days – recently renovated with a touch of elegance. Offers a range of rooms including excellent value suites. Wi-fi available. 200–349dh (£16-28/$26-46/€18-30)
Hôtel Espanol Av Mohammed Zerktouni 0539 912650. A large new hotel with comfortable, attractive rooms, many with bathtubs and balconies. 350–499dh (£28-40/$46-65/€30-44)
Hôtel Essalam 9 Av Hassan II 0539 916822, 0539 916822. One of our readers described this place as “the best budget hotel in Morocco”, and we’d be hard-pressed to disagree: the rooms, some of which are en suite, are spacious and immaculate, with constant hot water and even a TV. 100–199dh (£8-16/$13-26/€9-18)
Hôtel Riad Av Moulay Mohammed Ben Abdallah 0539 912626, 0539 912629. The former mansion of the Duchesse de Guise, mother of the current pretender to the French throne, and supposedly the best hotel in town, with gardens, a restaurant and café. Retains an attractive old-world colonial ambience, though with major renovation plans in the pipeline, this could change. 350–499dh (£28-40/$46-65/€30-44)
Hôtel Somaryan 68 Av Mohammed Zerktouni 0539 910116. Another recently opened modern hotel which, despite the slightly bizarre decor in the lobby, offers large attractive rooms. 350–499dh (£28-40/$46-65/€30-44)
Pension Amal 10 Rue Abdallah Ben Yasin 0539 912788. Basic, with simple but decent rooms, this is signposted – off to the left down an alleyway – on the street from the bus station to Place de la Libération. Hot showers 10dh extra and there is a public shower in the same little side street. 100–199dh (£8-16/$13-26/€9-18)
Pension Essalama 50 Av Moulay Mohammed Ben Abdallah 0676 994747. Welcoming, budget hotel with basic rooms. Hot showers 10dh. 99dh or under (under £8/$13/€9)
The town and beach
The town’s circular main square, Place de la Libération, is a striking piece of Spanish colonial architecture, set just back from the sea and a straightforward 400-metre walk from the bus station and grand taxi stand.
A high archway, Bab el Khemis, at the centre of the square leads into the Medina, a surprisingly compact wedge of alleys and stairways leading down towards the port. The colonnaded market square, just inside the archway, was built by the Spanish in the seventeenth century.
If you carry on through the Medina, you can reach the small Place de Makhzen, below the Château de la Cigogne (Castle of the Stork), a hulking, three-sided fortress from the original Spanish occupation. Standing back from here, to the right, is a palace, built by the Spanish in 1915 and now used as a music school. Opposite, overlooking the Oued Loukos and across to Lixus, is a fine esplanade and a small archeological museum (daily except Mon 9am–noon & 3–6pm; 10dh), converted from a prison and containing a few Roman coins and other relics from Lixus.
The beach and coastline
If you walk from the Place de la Libération, directly to the seafront, you find yourself on another, longer promenade, Avenue Moulay Ismail. The shore below here is wild and rocky, but cross the estuary of the Oued Loukos and there are miles of fine sandy beach sheltered by trees and flanked by a handful of café-restaurants. You can get there by bus (#4 from the port, every 20min – some buses start from the square), a circuitous seven-kilometre route, or, more fun, from the port in a flotilla of small fishing boats (5–15dh per person depending on whether you haggle), which shuttle across leaving from the base of a flight of stone steps. From the square, the quickest route down to the port is along the promenade and under the crumbling ruins of the Fort Kebibat (Little Domes), built by Portuguese merchants in the sixteenth century.
In summer, an oddity on the beach is the variety of foreign languages you hear – yet with so few foreigners around. The explanation is the number of migrant families who return to the town for their holidays. People from Larache make up a big part of the Moroccan community in London, and on the beach you’re likely to come upon kids with disarming English accents.
Eating
Meals in Larache, except at the Medina cafés, or the sardine grills down by the port, remain resolutely Spanish. The cheapest cafés are in Place de la Libération around Bab el Khemis, the entrance archway of the Medina. The Restaurant Commercial here serves fine paella, fish and chicken tajine.
A little more upmarket, and worth trying for seafood, are Restaurant Larache at 18 Av Moulay Mohammed Ben Abdallah, and the Estrella del Mar at 68 Av Mohammed Zerktouni (the other end from Pl de la Libération). For a quick late-night snack, Pizza Khalid on Rue Moulay Mohammed Ben Abdallah serves pizza by the slice. The seafront tea rooms also serve snacks and lunches.
Ancient Lixus
Ancient Lixus is one of the oldest – and most continuously – inhabited sites in Morocco. It had been settled in prehistoric times, long before the arrival of Phoenician colonists around 1000 BC, under whom it is thought to have become the first trading post of North Africa. Later, it was in turn an important Carthaginian and Roman city, and was deserted only in the fifth century AD, two hundred years after Diocletian had withdrawn the empire’s patronage. There are remains of a church from this period, and Arabic coins have also been found.
As an archaeological site, then, Lixus is certainly significant, and its legendary associations with Hercules, add an element of mythic allure. The ruins lie upon and below the summit of a low hill on the far side of the Oued Loukos estuary, at the crossroads of the main Larache–Tangier road and the narrow lane to Larache beach. A track, worth climbing for the panoramic view alone, wends up to the amphitheatre area, where there are mosaics. The ruins are interesting rather than impressive, and only around a quarter of the site has been excavated.
It’s a four- to five-kilometre walk to the ruins from either the beach or town, or you can take bus #6 which runs between the two or bus #5 from town; alternatively, for about 100dh you could charter a boat to row you over from Larache, wait an hour or so, and then row you back to the town or beach.
Lixus and Hercules
The legendary associations of Lixus – and the site’s mystique – centre on the Labours of Hercules. For here, on an island in the estuary, Pliny and Strabo record reports of the palace of the “Libyan” (by which they meant African) King Antaeus. Behind the palace stretched the Garden of the Hesperides, to which Hercules, as his penultimate labour, was dispatched.
In the object of Hercules’ quest – the Golden Apples – it is not difficult to imagine the tangerines of northern Morocco, raised to legendary status by travellers’ tales. The site, too, seems to offer reinforcement to conjectures of a mythic pre-Phoenician past. Megalithic stones have been found on the Acropolis – they may have been linked astronomically with those of Mzoura – and the site was known to the Phoenicians as Makom Shemesh (City of the Sun).
The site
The site is not effectively enclosed, so there are no real opening hours. A notice by the roadside at the entrance explains the site with a useful map board. The Lower Town, spreading back from the modern road, consists largely of the ruins of factories for the production of salt – still being panned nearby – and garum fish sauce. The factories seem to have been developed in the early years of the first century AD and they remained in operation until the Roman withdrawal.
A track, some 100m down the road to Tangier, leads up to the Acropolis (upper town), passing on its way eight rows of the Roman theatre and amphitheatre, unusually combined into a single structure. Its deep, circular arena was adapted for circus games and the gladiatorial slaughter of animals. Morocco, which Herodotus knew as “the wild-beast country”, was the major source for these Roman venations (controlled hunts), and local colonists must have grown rich from the trade. Until 1998, the baths built into the side of the theatre featured a remarkable mosaic depicting Neptune’s head on the body of a lobster; unfortunately, the mosaic was irreparably damaged when the gardien’s son tried to dig it up to sell, and just about a third of it remains.
Climbing above the baths and theatre, you pass through ramparts to the main fortifications of the Acropolis – a somewhat confused network of walls and foundations – and temple sanctuaries, including an early Christian basilica and a number of pre-Roman buildings. The most considerable of the sanctuaries, with their underground cisterns and porticoed priests’ quarters, were apparently rebuilt in the first century AD, but even then retained Phoenician elements in their design.
South from Larache
Heading south from Larache, the main road and most of the buses bypass Ksar el Kebir on their way towards Meknes, Fes or Kenitra/Rabat. You’ll probably do likewise, though the town does have one of the largest weekly markets in the region (on Sundays). Just past here, you cross the old border between Spanish and French colonial zones. Beyond, Moulay Bousselham has miles of sandy beach, some attractive accommodation options and is a hot spot for birdwatchers.
Ksar el Kebir and around
As its name – in Arabic, “the Great Enclosure” – suggests, KSAR EL KEBIR, an eleventh-century Arab power base 36km southeast of Larache, was once a place of some importance. It was 12km north of here where, in August 1578, the Portuguese fought the disastrous Battle of the Three Kings, the most dramatic and devastating in their nation’s history – a power struggle disguised as a crusade, which saw the death or capture of virtually the entire nobility and which ultimately resulted in 62 years of Spanish rule.
The town fell into decline in the seventeenth century, after a local chief incurred the wrath of Moulay Ismail, though its fortunes were revived to some extent under the Spanish protectorate, when it served as a major barracks.
The Sunday souk is held right by the gare routière and Moulay el Mehdi station. On any morning of the week, however, there are lively souks around the main kissaria (covered market) of the old town – in the quarter known as Bab el Oued (Gate of the River). Beyond Ksar el Kebir, a decaying customs post at Arbaoua marks the old colonial frontier between the Spanish and French zones. South again, Souk el Arba Du Rharb is the first settlement of any size, though it is little more than its name suggests (Wednesday Market of the Plain), a roadside sprawl of market stalls, with some grill-cafés and a few hotels, the best of which is the Gharb Hôtel (no phone; 100–199dh (£8-16/$13-26/€9-18)).
Practicalities
The easiest way to get to Ksar el Kebir is by train, but for the town centre get off at Moulay el Mehdi station, one stop south of Ksar el Kebir station, which is way out on the northern edge of town. As the motorway bypasses the town, few long-distance buses come here; grands taxis from Larache operate to and from a station just across the tracks from the gare routière, and those from Ouezzane and Souk el Arba du Rharb operate from one 500m further south. For those heading to Chefchaouen by car see The R410.
Hôtel Ksar al Yamama, 8 Bd Hassan II (0539 907960, 0539 903838; 100–199dh (£8-16/$13-26/€9-18)), is good value, with nice, large, airy rooms, some en suite with a bathtub, and some with balconies overlooking a town square. To get to it, head south from the Moulay el Mehdi station and turn right after 300m. There’s a trio of cheaper and more basic hotels just across the square on Boulevard Mohammed V. For meals, there isn’t much, but try the grill-café Khay Ibd Rahim on Boulevard Mohammed V, across the square from Hôtel Ksar al Yamama.
Moulay Bousselham
MOULAY BOUSSELHAM, 55km from Ksar el Kebir, is a very low-key resort, popular almost exclusively with Moroccans. It comprises little more than a single street, crowded with grill-cafés and sloping down to the sea at the side of a broad lagoon and wetland area, known as Merdja Zerga. This is one of northern Morocco’s prime birdwatching locations, and any foreign visitor will be accosted by the growing number of resident guides to see the lagoon’s flamingo and other bird colonies.
The beach itself is sheltered by cliffs – rare along the Atlantic – and has an abrupt drop-off, which creates a continual crash of breaking waves. While a lot of fun for swimming, the currents can be highly dangerous and the beach is strictly patrolled by lifeguards. Take care.
For Moroccans, the village is part summer resort, part pilgrimage centre. The saint from whom the village takes its name, the Marabout Moulay Bousselham, was a tenth-century Egyptian, whose remains are housed in a koubba prominently positioned above the settlement. In July this sees one of the largest moussems in the region.
Moulay Bousselham has a post office (east of town on the Souk el Arba road), branches of the banks Banque de Populaire and Credit Agricole, the latter with an ATM, and a téléboutique.
Wetland wildlife
Adjoining the Moulay Bousselham lagoon is a large wetland area – awarded protected wildlife status – known as Merdja Zerga (“Blue Lake”). This open barren space is used for grazing by nomadic herds of sheep, cattle and goats, while around the periphery are lines of dwarf palm and the giant succulent agave.
This diversity of habitat, and the huge extent of the site, ensures rewarding birdwatching at all times of year. There are large numbers of waders, including a large colony of flamingos, plus little ringed plovers, black-winged stilts and black-tailed godwits.
For serious birdwatchers, it is the gulls and terns that roost on the central islands which are worthy of the closest inspection, as, among the flocks of lesser black-backed gull and black tern, it is possible to find rarer species such as Caspian tern. However, the campsite (Camping Caravaning International) at Moulay Bousselham is probably the best place in Morocco to see pairs of North African marsh owl which usually appear hunting over the adjacent grassland ten to fifteen minutes after sunset, and the same vantage point is also a good spot for seeing Barbary partridge. One bird you’ll certainly see wintering here, usually around cattle (and sometimes sitting on their backs), is the cattle egret. For rarity-spotters, the grail is the slender-billed curlew, an endangered species, spotted once or twice in recent years; it is smaller than the European curlew with distinct spade-like markings on its flanks.
The Café Milano in Moulay Bousselham keeps a bird log and will put you in touch with English speaking, local ornithologist Hassan Dalil (0668 434110) who comes highly recommended as a guide to the area and its birdlife. Hassan charges 100dh per hour for a tour around Merja Zerga by boat and his expertise is immediately evident. These tours are best taken in early morning or at dusk, depending on the tides.
Accommodation and eating
Moulay Bousselham has two campsites: the ageing Camping Caravanning International (0537 432477), 500m east of town on the lagoon and consequently plagued by mosquitoes; and the nearby curiously named Flamants Loisirs, or “spare flamingos” (0537 432539) which is in slightly better condition and has a swimming pool and bungalows for rent. Accommodation includes the Villa Nora (0537 432071; 350–499dh (£28-40/$46-65/€30-44)), a family-run villa on the coast road at the northern end of town, about 1.5km from the centre. Overlooking the beach and the Atlantic rollers, it’s an attractive place, with an English owner, Jean Oliver, who is knowledgeable on local birdlife and in summer exhibits works of Moroccan art. Down by the lagoon is La Maison des Oiseaux, “the house of the birds” (0661 301067, maisondesoiseaux@hotmail.com; 350–499dh (£28-40/$46-65/€30-44)), a whitewashed villa with a pleasant garden and a homely family atmosphere. There’s a variety of rooms including some family suites that sleep up to four adults. Themed courses such as cooking and yoga can also be arranged. On the town’s main road and with fantastic views over the lagoon is the Hôtel Le Lagoon (0537 432650, 0537 432649; 350–499dh (£28-40/$46-65/€30-44)) with comfortable rooms and a restaurant. The Hôtel Mirimar (no phone; 100–199dh (£8-16/$13-26/€9-18)), in the middle of town and overlooking the beach, has very basic rooms with separate showers and toilets at the back of a busy café.
Most of the grill-cafés will fix you a mixed platter of fish – served in copious amounts and at very reasonable prices. For restaurants, Firdaous, Normandie and Restaurant Milano, all on the main street, are good bets. The Milano is also a good place to contact bird guides.
Ceuta (Sebta)
A Spanish enclave since the sixteenth century, CEUTA (Sebta in Arabic) is a curious political anomaly. Along with Melilla, east along the coast, it was retained by Spain after Moroccan independence in 1956 and today functions largely as a military base, its economy bolstered by a limited duty-free status. It has been an autonomous city, with a large measure of internal self-government for its 80,000 inhabitants, since 1995. The city makes for an attractive stop when en-route either to or from Morocco with its relaxed European atmosphere, pristine squares, tapas bars, coastal walks, and pleasant accommodation options. However, you will need no more than a day or two here to experience most of what is on offer.
Note that Ceuta works to Spanish time, an hour ahead of Morocco (two hours ahead between the times when Europe and Morocco change to daylight saving). When phoning Ceuta from Morocco (or anywhere else outside Spain), you must prefix phone numbers with the international code (00 34). Dialling numbers within Ceuta you must include the old local code 956 as part of the new nine-digit number. To phone Morocco from Ceuta, you need to dial 00 212, followed by the local code (minus the initial zero) and number. Ceuta uses the euro.
Crossing the border at Ceuta
Since the Algeciras–Ceuta ferries and hydrofoils are quicker than those to Tangier (and the ferries significantly cheaper for cars or motorbikes), Ceuta is a popular point of entry and exit. Coming over on a first visit to Morocco, however, try to arrive early in the day so that you have plenty of time to move on to Tetouan – and possibly beyond. There is no customs/passport check at the port as you don’t officially enter Morocco until the border, 3km out of town. This can be reached by local bus #7 from the centre of Ceuta (turn left as you come off the ferry or hydrofoil and it is about 800m away, in Plaza de la Constitución). Coming from the Moroccan side, most buses and grands taxis drop you off in Fnideq, 2km short of the border. If so, just head down to the coastal highway, where you can pick up a grand taxi to the border post for 5dh a place or you can simply walk.
At the border, formalities are brief on the Spanish side – at least, if you are leaving Spain: searches are common for those coming back, and there are often tailbacks of cars on Sunday evenings, though the main customs check (complete with dogs and X-ray machines) is across the Straits at Algeciras. On the Moroccan side, the procedure can be time-consuming, especially for drivers. You need a registration form (yellow or photocopied white) for yourself, and, if you have a car, an additional green form; these are available – if you ask for them – from the security chefs outside the frontier post. The car form requires inconvenient details such as chassis number and date of registration. If you despair of getting a form and having it processed, you can always enlist an official porter (they have badges – ask to see it) for a 10dh tip; try and avoid unofficial touts (and ignore touts trying to charge you for immigration forms, which are free). The whole business can take ten minutes on a good day, an hour or two on a bad one, and the noise and chaos can be a bit unsettling. Just try to keep a steady head and if you are in doubt as to where and what you should do, ask one of the (sometimes over-stressed) officials for assistance or directions.
Once across and into Morocco proper, you can take a shared grand taxi to Fnideq, 2km away (5dh per place), where you’ll find connecting services to Tetouan (15dh) or Tangier (30dh); buses also run from Fnideq to both towns. Coming into Ceuta, local bus #7 departs directly from the border post (€0.70) as do metered taxis (€2.90 to the town centre).
On the Moroccan side of the border there are branches of BMCE and Banque Populaire, which accept cash and travellers’ cheques, and on the Spanish side there are a couple of travel agencies that will change Moroccan dirhams for you.
Drivers should note that petrol in Ceuta is about forty percent cheaper than in mainland Spain, so stock up as best you can. It is tempting to fill up spare tanks too, but be aware that Spanish customs officers at Algeciras could sting you for duty if you do.
Arrival and information
Ceuta’s tourist office is off the southern end of Paseo de las Palmeras (Mon–Fri 8.30am–8.30pm, Sat/Sun 9am–8pm). There are also a few information kiosks, the main one on Grand Via across from Hotel Tryp (daily 10.30am–1.30pm and 6–9pm in theory, but often closed). Currency exchange is available on the Spanish side of the border and at most banks on Paseo Del Revellin. There is also a currency exchange booth in the ferry terminal. Internet access is available at Cyber Ceuta on Paseo Colón.
Border trade: people and drugs
Over the last few decades, the economies on both sides of the border seemed to benefit from the enclave, spurred on by Ceuta’s duty-free status. However, the border is also the frontier between Africa and Europe and inevitably the EU is increasingly concerned about traffic in drugs and illegal immigrants, financing a £15m ($22m) hi-tech “wall” with closed-circuit TV and sensors along the eight-kilometre boundary.
The money to be made from outflanking these defences has attracted equally hi-tech smugglers, trading in hash, hard drugs, disadvantaged Moroccans, and refugees from as far south as Liberia and Rwanda. More affluent refugees have been sent over to Spain by night, often in small boats unsuited to the short but difficult crossing. The more desperate try to swim across to Ceuta from Fnideq’s beach or scale the six-metre high border fence. Most recently, there has been growing dissent in the impoverished residential areas of Ceuta where Moroccan residents have come into conflict with the Spanish authorities over a severe lack of employment and poor living conditions.
Accommodation
Accommodation problems are compounded at festival times, the main events being Carnival (Feb), Holy Week, the Fiesta de Nuestra Señora de Monte Carmel (July 16), and the Fiesta de Nuestra Señora de Africa on August 5, though it’s advisable to book ahead at all times of the year.
Most of the dozen or so hotels and hostales, and cheaper pensións, casas de huespedes and fondas are to be found along the main thoroughfare, Paseo del Revellín, or its extensions, Calle Camoens and Calle Real. Some of the cheaper places are easy to miss, distinguished only by their blue and white signs (H for Hostal; P for Pension; CH for Casa de Huespedes; F for Fonda).
Hostal Central 15 Paseo del Revellín 956 516716, www.hostalesceuta.com. An excellent new option with comfortable modern rooms and all the mod-cons. Wi-fi available. 700–999dh (£56-80/$92-131/€61-88)
Hostal Plaza Ruiz 3 Plaza Teniente Ruiz 956 516733, www.hostalesceuta.com. Under the same ownership as Hostal Central, this offers slightly larger rooms, some with balconies. Wi-fi available. 700–999dh (£56-80/$92-131/€61-88)
Hostal Real c/Real 1, third floor 956 511449. A pleasant, comfortable little pensión, a cut above the average, though most rooms lack outside windows. 500–699dh (£40-56/$65-92/€44-61)
Hotel Atalaya Avda Reyes Catolicos 6 956 504161. A quiet two-star hotel on the way into town from the border, on bus route #7. All rooms are en suite. 700–999dh (£56-80/$92-131/€61-88)
Hotel Tryp Gran Via 2 956 511200. A new four-star hotel with a gleaming white atrium and quite luxurious rooms. 1000–1499dh (£80-120/$131-196/€88-132)
Gran Hotel Ulises c/Camoens 5 956 514540, www.hotelceuta.com. A recently refurbished and respectable four-star business hotel on a pedestrian mall. Breakfast included. 1000–1499dh (£80-120/$131-196/€88-132)
Parador de Ceuta (Gran Hôtel La Muralla) Pl de Africa 15 956 514940, www.parador.es. Ceuta’s characterful old Parador remains the prime choice if you can afford it. 1000–1499dh (£80-120/$131-196/€88-132)
Pensión la Bohemia Paseo del Revellín 12, first floor 956 510615. Best deal among the cheapies, clean and comfortable though most rooms lack outside windows. 500–699dh (£40-56/$65-92/€44-61)
Pensión Charito c/Arrabal 5 956 513982. One of the best and most welcoming among a number of small, cheap lodgings in this area. Located on the second floor of an unmarked building, one door down the hill from Limite bar. Cold showers. 500–699dh (£40-56/$65-92/€44-61)
The Town
Ceuta has a long and eventful history, with occupation by Phoenicians, Romans, Visigoths, Byzantines, Moors, Portuguese, and finally the Spanish. Despite this tumultuous history, there’s not a great deal to see – or do. The town is modern, functional and provincial in the lacklustre Spanish manner, and its most attractive part is within several hundred metres of the new ferry dock, where the Plaza de Africa is flanked by a pair of Baroque churches, Nuestra Señora de Africa (Our Lady of Africa – open most days) and the cathedral (usually locked). Bordering the square, to the west, are the most impressive remainders of the city walls – the walled moat of Foso de San Felipe and the adjacent Muralla Real (daily 10am–2pm & 4–8pm; free). The oldest sections of the fortifications were built by the Byzantines.
To the east of Plaza de la Constitución, an oldish quarter rambles up from the bottom of the long Paseo del Revellin. There’s an interesting little municipal museum here, the Museo de Ceuta (June–Aug Mon–Sat 10am–2pm & 7–9pm, Sun 10am–2pm; Sept–May, same except evenings 5–8pm only; free), displaying archeological finds from Stone Age and Roman times through to the Islamic era, well laid out and with good explanations, but in Spanish only. There is also a section dedicated to contemporary art exhibitions on the ground floor. To the south of here, the Museo de la Legión (Mon–Sat 10am–1.30pm; free), on Paseo de Colón, offers a glimpse of Spanish–African military history, crammed with uniforms, weapons and paraphernalia of the infamous Spanish Foreign Legion.
From the museum, if you have a couple of hours to spare, you can continue along a round circuit of the peninsula by heading east on Recinto Sur. As the buildings gradually disappear from view, the land swells into a rounded, pine-covered slope, known as Monte Acho, crowned by a Byzantine-era fort offering fine views out to the Rock of Gibraltar. Around midway, signs direct you to the Ermita de San Antonio, an old convent rebuilt during the 1960s and dominated by a monument to Franco. At the very eastern end of the peninsula is another military museum, the Museo del Desnarigado, (Sat & Sun 11am–2pm & 4–6pm; free), housed in a fort that is mainly nineteenth-century though with remnants from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Other Ceuta attractions include a town beach, 1km southwest of the moat, and a seafront leisure and amusement complex, the Parque Maritime del Mediterráneo (daily 11am–8pm; closed Thurs in winter; €5, children €3), complete with swimming pools, restaurants, and a casino.
The duty-free status of the port draws many Tangier expats on day-trips to buy cheap spirits, and Spanish day-trippers to buy radios and cameras, but, besides buying a cheap bottle, these aren’t very compelling pursuits for casual visitors. If you do want to stock up on booze, stop at either of the Supsersol or Aliprox supermarkets just outside the ferry terminal on Avenida Muelle Cañonero Dato.
Eating and drinking
Ceuta’s main concentration of restaurants is around the Plaza de la Constitución. For tapas bars, check the smaller streets off Calle Camoens.
China Town Av Muelle Canonero Dato. Just south of the ferry terminal. A busy and cheerful Chinese restaurant. Cheap to moderate.
Club Nautico c/Edrissis 956 514400. A small fish restaurant within the town’s boat club, just off Paseo de las Palmeras and overlooking the fishing harbour. Serves up some of the best seafood dishes in Ceuta. Open Mon–Sat 9am–3pm & 5pm–midnight, Sun 10am–3pm. Moderate.
Gran Muralla Plaza de la Constitución 4. A popular, long-established Chinese restaurant with extensive menu and sweeping views over the harbour, located up the steps from the square. Moderate.
Hollywood Café c/Padilla 4. Very friendly, family-run café with toasted sandwiches, paella and other Spanish dishes. Daily 10am–9pm. Cheap.
La Campana c/Real 13. A smoke-filled bar-café with a reasonable €6 set menu (though no choice for non-pork eaters), plus tapas, spaghetti, sandwiches, beer and wine from the barrel. The hilariously grumpy service alone makes it worth the visit. It also has a great patisserie next door. Cheap.
Moving on
Leaving Ceuta by ferry for Algeciras, you can normally turn up at the port, buy tickets, and board a ferry within a couple of hours, though you can only travel with the company from which you have purchased your tickets. The two periods to avoid, as at Tangier, are the end of the Easter week (Semana Santa) holiday and the last week of August, when the ferries can be full for days on end with Moroccan workers and their families returning to northern Europe.
If you plan to use the quicker hydrofoil service to Algeciras, it’s best to book the previous day – though you should be fine outside the high season.
Shipping companies represented at the ferry terminal include Acciona Trasmediterránea (956 522215), Balearia Nautus (956 205190), Buquebus (956 501113) and Euroferrys (956 521529). For details of services, see Ferry routes and agents. Be aware that all arrivals from Ceuta need to go through customs at Algeciras, where searches of suspected drug-runners can be extremely thorough.
A more expensive way across the Straits is via a helicopter service run by Inaer (Málaga 952 048700, Ceuta 956 504974, www.grupoinaer.com), between Ceuta and Málaga. This service runs five times daily on weekdays, twice on Saturdays and Sundays, and costs €134 per person one way.
Tetouan
If you are new to Morocco, coming from Ceuta, TETOUAN will be your first experience of a Moroccan city with its crowded streets and noisy souks. You do need to keep your wits about you, especially arriving with baggage at the bus station, as hustlers try to latch on to new arrivals. Despite the hustle, a new university in nearby Martil has relaxed the general atmosphere and promoted a more open-minded attitude towards foreigners.
Approaching Tetouan from the landward side it looks strikingly beautiful, poised atop the slope of an enormous valley against a dark mass of rock. Its name (pronounced Tet-tá-wan) means “open your eyes” in Berber, an apparent reference to the town’s hasty construction by Andalucian refugees in the fifteenth century. The refugees, both Muslims and Jews, brought with them the most refined sophistication of Moorish Andalucía, reflected in the architecture of the Medina. Their houses, full of extravagant detail, with tiled lintels and wrought-iron balconies, seem much more akin to the old Arab quarters of Cordoba and Seville than those of Moroccan towns. With its excellent local beaches, Tetouan is a popular Moroccan resort that attracts mostly Moroccan families who flock to the beach in the summer to escape the heat.
Arrival, orientation and information
Buses arrive at the new bus station 1km south of the city. CTM buses arrive at a separate station below Boulevard Sidi Driss on the edge of the Ville Nouvelle. Built by the Spanish in the 1920s, this quarter of town follows a straightforward grid. At its centre is Place Moulay el Mehdi, with the Spanish consulate, post office and main banks. From there the pedestrianized Boulevard Mohammed V runs east to Place Hassan II and the Royal Palace, beyond which lies the Medina, still partially walled and entered through the Bab er Rouah gateway.
Official guides can be enlisted at the helpful tourist office (Mon–Thurs 8.30am–4.30pm, Fri 8.30–11:30am & 2–4.30pm; 0539 961915, 0539 961402), a few metres from Place Moulay el Mehdi at 30 Bd Mohammed V. There are various internet points scattered throughout the town centre. Try the first floor internet café on the corner of Rue Mohammed Ben Larbi Torres and Rue De La Luneta on the southern end of Place Hassan II.
Accommodation
Ignore all offers from touts and head for one of the recommendations below. You’re likely to get the best deal at the hotels, as most of the thirty-or-so pensions (including the few we’ve listed) raise their prices well above basic rates in summer when rooms can be in short supply.
The nearest campsites are on the beach or nearby at Martil, 11km out ( for transport details), which can be useful fallbacks if you have problems finding a room.
El Reducto 38 Zankat Zawya, in a lane off Bd Mohammed V 0539 968120, www.riadtetouan.com. Tetouan’s most upmarket accommodation, this small riad used to be the home of the Spanish governor, and has been lovingly brought back to life by the current owner. Four individually furnished suites overlook a central courtyard and (excellent) restaurant. Book ahead. Includes breakfast. 500–999dh (£56-80/$92-131/€61-88)
Hôtel Bilbao 7 Bd Mohammed V (no phone). This is one of the cheapest pensions and is centrally placed. Reasonably clean, with cold showers in the rooms. 100–199dh (£8-16/$13-26/€9-18)
Hôtel Chams Rue Abdelkhaleq Torres 0539 990901, 0539 990907. Still one of Tetouan’s best hotels, 3km out of town on the road to Martil. Comfortable – with a pool, a/c and satellite TV – but hardly worth the out-of-town inconvenience. 500–699dh (£40-56/$65-92/€44-61)
Hôtel Oumaima Av 10 Mai 0539 963473. Central and functional, with small rooms, each with a TV, and a ground-floor café for breakfast. 200–349dh (£16-28/$26-46/€18-30)
Hôtel Principe 20 Av Youssef Ben Tachfine 0533 113128. Midway from the bus station to Place Moulay el Mehdi, just off the pedestrianized strip of Bd Mohammed V. A decent cheapie but with gloomy rooms, some boasting a shower. There’s a café for breakfast and snacks. 100–199dh (£8-16/$13-26/€9-18)
Hôtel Regina 8 Rue Sidi Mandri 0539 962113. A small hotel with en-suite rooms, cheaper and rather better value than the Oumaima and the Paris. A small café serves breakfast. 100–199dh (£8-16/$13-26/€9-18)
Hôtel Trebol 3 Av Yacoub el Mansour 0539 962093. Very basic but clean and cheap (especially for singles), but has no showers at all. 99dh or under (under £8/$13/€9)
Hôtel Victoria 23 Av Mohammed V 0539 965015. Good-value, clean and very cheap with shared bathroom facilities. 100–199dh (£8-16/$13-26/€9-18)
Paris Hôtel 31 Rue Chkil Arssalane 0539 966750, 0539 712654. Not dissimilar to the Oumaima (even the price was identical at last check), with slightly nicer rooms, those at the back being quietest. The restaurant is open in summer only. 200–349dh (£16-28/$26-46/€18-30)
Pensión Iberia 5 Pl Moulay el Mehdi, third floor 0539 963679. Above the BMCE bank, central, clean, and excellent value for money. Hot showers (10dh). 100–199dh (£8-16/$13-26/€9-18)
Riad Dalia 25 Rue Ouessaa Mtamar 0539 964318, www.riad-dalia.com. An atmospheric riad nestled in the Medina with variety of rooms and suites, all very reasonably priced. The view from the terrace may well be the best in Tetouan. 350–999dh (£56-80/$92-131/€61-88)
The Medina
Two cities rose and fell in the vicinity of Tetouan before the present-day city was built. Tamuda, the scant ruins of which can still be seen on the south side of Oued Martil 4km southeast of town, was founded by the Berber Mauritanians in the third century BC, and razed by the Romans in 42 AD; and the original Tetouan, built by the Merenids in 1307, on the same site as today’s Medina, destroyed by a Castilian raiding party in 1399. The present town was established in 1484 by Muslims and Jews fleeing the Christian reconquest of Andalucía in southern Spain. Jewish merchants – able to pass relatively freely between Muslim North Africa and Christian Europe – brought prosperity to the city, and ramparts were put up in the seventeenth century under Moulay Ismail.
Tetouan has since been occupied twice by the Spanish. It was seized briefly, as a supposed threat to Ceuta, from 1859 to 1862, a period which saw the Medina converted to a town of almost European appearance, complete with street lighting. Then, in 1913 a more serious, colonial occupation began. Tetouan served first as a military garrison for the subjugation of the Rif, later as the capital of the Spanish Protectorate Zone. As such it almost doubled in size to handle the region’s trade and administration, and it was here in 1936 that General Franco declared his military coup against Spain’s elected Liberal–Socialist coalition government, thus igniting the Spanish Civil War.
For Tetouan’s Moroccan population, there was little progress during the colonial period. Spanish administration retained a purely military character and only a handful of schools were opened throughout the entire zone. This legacy had effects well beyond independence in 1956, and the town, alongside its Rif hinterland, adapted with difficulty to the new nation and was at the centre of anti-government rioting as recently as 1984. Aware of this undercurrent, the new king, Mohammed VI, made it his business to visit the former Spanish protectorate almost as soon as he ascended the throne in 1999, a gesture that has helped to give Tetouan and its region a much stronger sense of nationhood than it had under the previous monarch.
Place Hassan II and the Mellah
To explore Tetouan, the place to start is Place Hassan II, the old meeting place and former market square where the Royal Palace (built on the site of the old Spanish consulate) stands, incorporating parts of a nineteenth-century Caliphal Palace that once stood beside it. The usual approach to the Medina is through Bab er Rouah (Gate of the Winds), the archway just south of the Royal Palace. The lane on the right, just before the archway, opens on to Rue al Qods, the main street of the Mellah, the old Jewish quarter which was created as late as 1807.
Into the Medina: the souks
Entering the Medina proper, at Bab er Rouah, you find yourself on Rue Terrafin, a relatively wide lane that (with its continuations) cuts straight across to the east gate, Bab el Okla. Along the way a series of alleys give access to most of the town’s food and craft souks. The Souk el Houts, a small shaded square directly behind the grounds of the Royal Palace is a good point of reference, being a central point between the northern and southern halves of the Medina.
From the north side of the Souk el Houts, two lanes wind up through a mass of alleys, souks and passageways towards Bab Sebta. Following the one on the right (east) for about twenty metres, you’ll see an opening to another small square. This is the Guersa el Kebira, essentially a cloth and textile souk, where a number of stalls sell the town’s highly characteristic foutahs – strong and brilliantly striped lengths of rug-like cotton, worn as a cloak and skirt by the Djebali and Riffian women.
Leaving the Guersa at its top right-hand corner, you should emerge more or less on Place de l’Oussa, another beautiful little square, easily recognized by an ornate, tiled fountain and trellises of vines. Along one of its sides is an imposing nineteenth-century Xharia, or almshouse; on another is an artisania shop, elegantly tiled and with good views over the quarter from its roof.
Beyond the square, still heading up towards Bab Sebta, are most of the specific craft souks – among them copper and brass workers, renowned makers of babouches (pointed leather slippers), and carpenters specializing in elaborately carved and painted wood. Most of the shops along the central lane here – Rue el Jarrazin – focus on the tourist trade, but this goes much less for the souks themselves.
So, too, with the nearby souks around Rue de Fès, which is reached most easily by following the lane beside the Royal Palace from Place Hassan II. This is the main thoroughfare of an area selling ordinary everyday goods, with the occasional villagers’ Joutia, or flea market. At its main intersection – just to the right as you come out onto the lane up from Place Hassan II – is Souk el Foki, once the town’s main business sector, though it’s little more than a wide alleyway. Following this past a small perfume souk and two sizeable mosques, you meet up with Rue el Jarrazin just below Bab Sebta (also known as Bab M’Kabar).
Walk out this way, passing (on your left) the superb portal of the Derkaoua Zaouia (no admission to non-Muslims), headquarters of the local Derkaoua brotherhood, and you enter a huge cemetery, in use since at least the fifteenth century and containing unusually elaborate Andalucian tombs. Fridays excluded, non-Muslims are tolerated in most Moroccan cemeteries, and walking here you get illuminating views over the Medina and across the valley to the Rif.
On the west side of the Medina, and most easily accessed from the Ville Nouvelle, there is a regular street market by Bab Tout, spilling out of the gates and along Rue Aljazaer. This is well worth a stroll and is only a couple of blocks north of Boulevard Mohammed V.
The Moroccan Arts Museum and Artisan School
The Moroccan Arts Museum (Tues–Sat 10am–6pm; 10dh), the entrance to which is just inside Bab el Okla, is housed in a former arms bastion and has an impressive collection of traditional crafts and ethnographic objects.
Across the road, outside the Medina’s walls, is the Artisan School (École des Métiers; Mon–Thurs & Sun 8am–4.30pm; 10dh), where you can see craftsmen working at new designs in the old ways, essentially unmodified since the fourteenth century. Perhaps owing to its Andalucian heritage, Tetouan actually has a slightly different zellij (enamelled tile mosaics) technique to other Moroccan cities – the tiles are cut before rather than after being fired. A slightly easier process, it is frowned upon by the craftsmen of Fes, whose own pieces are more brittle, but brighter in colour and closer fitting. Many of the workshops have items for sale if you enquire.
The Ensemble Artisanal and Archeological Museum
The Ensemble Artisanal (Mon–Sat 9.30am–1pm & 3.30–7pm) on the main road below the town has regular exhibits on the ground floor which can be worth a look if you’re planning to make purchases in the souks and want to assess prices and quality first. However, the main point of interest is upstairs, where you will find a fascinating array of carpet and embroidery workshops and outside the building, where there are metalwork, basketry and musical instrument artisans at work. This is a unique opportunity to get up close to the craftsmen and women and their work without feeling pressured into buying anything. Nearby, the Old Train Station, which looks like an Oriental palace, will soon (dates are vague) house a modern art museum.
The Archeological Museum (Tues–Sat 10am–6pm; 10dh) is off Place al Jala at the eastern end of Boulevard Mohammed V. It was founded during the Spanish protectorate, so it features exhibits from throughout their zone, including rock carvings from the Western Sahara. Highlights, as so often in North Africa, are the Roman mosaics, mostly gathered from Lixus and the oft-plundered Volubilis.
Other than these, the most interesting exhibits are concerned with the stone circle at Mzoura, including a model and aerial photographs.
Eating, drinking and entertainment
Tetouan is not exactly a gourmet’s paradise, with nowhere really worth going out of your way for. As ever, the cheapest food is to be found in the Medina, particularly the stalls inside Bab er Rouah and along Rue de la Luneta in the old Mellah quarter. For variety, try one of the many places on or around Boulevard Mohammed V or Rue Mohammed Ben Larbi Torres in the Ville Nouvelle. Two good cinemas are the Avenida, on Place al Adala (off Av 10 Mai) and the Monumental, near the Hôtel Principe. The Español, near the Restaurant La Union, mainly shows “l’histoire et la géographie” (a double bill of Bollywood and kung fu). The Institut Francais (0539 961212), a cultural arts foundation, frequently puts on concerts and theatre performances at various venues in Tetouan. Check with the tourist office and keep an eye out for flyers.
Restaurants
El Reducto 38 Zankat Zawya, in a lane off Bd Mohammed V 0539 968120, www.riadtetouan.com. Open to non-residents daily 8am–late. The menu is mainly Moroccan with some inventive Spanish and seafood dishes, all very reasonably priced. Licensed. Moderate.
Palace Bouhlal 48 Jamaa el-Kebir, a lane north of the Grand Mosque 0539 998797. A palace restaurant which serves indulgent Moroccan meals in a richly decorated salon. Open daily, lunch only. Moderate.
Restaurant la Union (formerly known as Restaurant Moderno), 1 Pasaje Achaach, off Rue Mohammed Ben Larbi Torres – to find it, go through the arcades opposite Cinema Español. Popular with locals, this budget eatery serves up standard Moroccan fare, including harira, brochettes and a reasonable meat tajine. Open daily noon–9.30pm. Cheap.
Restaurant Restinga 21 Bd Mohammed V. Eat indoors or in a courtyard at this very pleasant restaurant that’s been serving tajine, couscous and fried fish twelve hours a day (11.30am–11.30pm) since 1968. Beer available with meals. Moderate.
Cafés and snack bars
Café de Paris Place Moulay el Mehdi. A large café on the main square, which has become quite a fashionable and relatively female-friendly hangout.
Caféterie Patisserie Smir 17 Bd Mohammed V. Rich gateaux, sweets and soft drinks. Daily 11am–11.30pm.
Chatt Rue Mourakah Annual. Popular spot with pretty much everything you’d need for breakfast, plus tea, coffee, burgers, omelettes and snacks. Daily; opens early and closes very late.
Pizzeria Sandwich Taouss 3 Rue 10 Mai. Pizzas, sandwiches and snacks to eat in or take out.
Moving on
From the main bus station there are regular departures to Chefchaouen, Meknes, Fes and Tangier; ask around for times at the various windows. CTM buses leave from a separate CTM station just below the Boulevard Sidi Driss (see map of Tetouan).
Heading for Tangier, Chefchaouen, Ceuta or the nearby coast resorts, it’s easiest to travel by grand taxi; these are routine runs – just go along to the ranks and get a place. Collective grands taxis for Tangier and Chefchaouen leave from Avenue Khaled Ibnou el Oualid, west of town, a twenty-minute walk or 15dh petit taxi ride. For the Ceuta border at Fnideq, they leave from Boulevard Sidi Driss). Grands taxis to Mdiq, Martil and Cabo Negro leave from the junction of Boulevard Sidi Driss with Avenue Hassan II; those for Oued Laou leave from the beginning of Avenue Ksar el Kebir, which is the Oued Laou turn-off from Avenue Hassan II, not far from Bab el Okla.
The Orquesta Andalusi de Tetouan
The Orquesta Andalusi de Tetouan is one of the best-known groups playing Moroccan-Andalous music, a seductive style awash with Oriental strings. It was founded, and is still conducted, by Abdessadaq Chekana, and his brother Abdellah leads on lute. The orchestra has recorded with Spanish flamenco singer Juan Peña Lebrijano and has toured with British composer Michael Nyman (best known for his soundtracks for Peter Greenaway’s films – and for The Piano). Despite such collaborations, none of them reads music; everything is committed to memory. They often play in Tetouan and you may be able to catch them locally at an official reception, or at a wedding or festival; ask at the tourist office, where staff may be able to help.
The Tetouan beaches: Mdiq to Oued Laou
Despite the numbers of tourists passing through, Tetouan is above all a resort for Moroccans, rich and poor alike – a character very much in evidence on the extensive beaches to the east of the town. Throughout the summer whole villages of family tents appear at Martil, Mdiq and, particularly, around Restinga-Smir, further north. Oued Laou, 40km southeast of Tetouan, is the destination of a younger, more alternative crowd in summer. All these places are accessible by bus and shared grand taxi from Tetouan.
Martil
Martil, essentially Tetouan’s city beach, was its port as well until the river between the two silted up. Today it is a small, slightly ramshackle seaside town which takes on a resort-like feel in summer when Moroccan families flood the beach to escape the heat. The beach, stretching all the way around to the headland of Cabo Negro, is superb – an eight-kilometre stretch of fine, yellow sand that is long enough to remain uncrowded, despite its summer popularity and colonization by Club Med and other tourist complexes.
There are various options for accommodation. Arriving from Tetouan, there is a small hotel on the right, Hôtel Los Mares (0539 688706; 200–349dh (£16-28/$26-46/€18-30)), a little tatty, but adequate for the price, as is Hostal Nouzha (no phone; 100–199dh (£8-16/$13-26/€9-18)), at the southern end of Avenue Moulay Rachid, the main road in town running parallel to the seafront road. Somewhat more expensive, but good value, is the Hôtel Etoile de la Mer (0539 979276; 200–349dh (£16-28/$26-46/€18-30); closed in winter), on the seafront by the grand taxi stand; known locally as the Nejma el Bahr, it has a popular café and restaurant.
Of the campsites, Camping al Boustane, a kilometre north (0539 688822), is well maintained and friendly, with plenty of shade, decent facilities, quite a classy restaurant and a pool. Camping Oued el Maleh is further out to the north (signposted from town), reached along a riverbank. It’s a dusty site but safe enough and has some shade and a useful shop; the beach is just 200m away.
There are many cafés and restaurants, though the majority are closed during the winter; recommended for refreshments and sea views is Café Rio Martil, on Avenue Prince Héritier nearly opposite Hôtel Etoile de la Mer. For meals try Café Restaurant Avenida at 102 Av Mohammed V or Restaurant Andalous, a pleasant restaurant specializing in fish, further north on the same road. Five kilometres towards Mdiq is the Restaurant La Lampe Magique (0539 970822), an extraordinary place complete with cupolas, one of which is made up of nine thousand Heineken bottles and illuminated at night. For pasta and pizza, try the friendly and popular Aux Vitamins de la Mer, 9 Av Moulay Rachid, next door to Hostal Nouzha.
Mdiq
Mdiq is a lovely coastal resort and semi-active fishing port, which can be approached via Martil or direct from Tetouan (18km on the N13). A popular, though slightly overdeveloped, promenade overlooks the superb town beach and there are a handful of nice places to stay nearby. The best hotel is the Golden Beach (0539 975077, 0539 975096; 500–699dh (£40-56/$65-92/€44-61)), a four-star beach holiday hotel with nightclub, swimming pool and all mod cons (demi-pension only in high season). Hotel Playa (0539 975166; 350–499dh (£28-40/$46-65/€30-44)) on Boulevard Lalla Nezha overlooking the beach is new and friendly and offers bright airy en suites, the majority of which have uninterrupted sea views. There is also a bar and restaurant on the ground floor. The town’s only budget option is the Narjiss opposite the police station on Avenue Lalla Nazha, the main road to Martil (0668 248095; 200–349dh (£16-28/$26-46/€18-30)). There is no campsite but campervans are usually allowed to stay overnight in the car park next to the promenade.
Restinga-Smir and Fnideq
Restinga-Smir is more a collective name for a length of beach than for an actual place or village: an attractive strip of the Mediterranean, dominated by package hotels and holiday villages. Many Moroccan families still camp in the woods between here and Fnideq. The rather spartan but inexpensive Al Fraja campsite, opposite the El Andalouz tourist complex and 15km from Fnideq, makes a good first or last stop in the country in summer; in winter it’s closed.
In addition, there are several hotels in Fnideq, just 2km from the Ceuta border, scattered along the town’s main road, Avenue Mohammed V. The best of these is Hôtel Fnideq (0539 675467; 200–349dh (£16-28/$26-46/€18-30)) whose en-suite rooms are basic but clean. Hôtel Alouiam (0539 76140; 200–349dh (£16-28/$26-46/€18-30)) further south, is a similar choice. Hôtel Nador (0539 675345; 200–349dh (£16-28/$26-46/€18-30)) is the cheapest of the bunch. For meals, try La Costa at 232 Av Mohammed V, an excellent seafood restaurant. Fnideq, however, has little to recommend it except a busy market for cheap Spanish goods.
Oued Laou
Travelling southeast from Tetouan, the coastline almost immediately changes and you come under the shadow of the Rif. The road (N16, formerly S608) follows the coast initially, but then begins to climb into the foothills of the Rif, a first taste of the zigzagging Moroccan mountain roads. Alongside the beach, near Cap Mazari, is the nicely shaded Camping Azla (14km from Tetouan; open summer only) with a small café/shop.
When you finally arrive in Oued Laou, 44km to the southeast, (served by local bus and grand taxi), you’re unlikely to want to return immediately. It’s not an especially pretty place – Riffian villages tend to look spread out and lack any core – but it has a near-deserted beach, which extends for miles on each side, particularly to the southeast, where the river has created a wide, fertile bay down to Kâaseras, 8km distant. Equally important, Oued Laou is one of the best parts of the Rif to meet and talk with local people. Hustlers have nothing to hustle except kif and rooms, and aren’t too bothered about either.
On Saturdays, there is a souk, held 3km inland from Oued Laou, which draws villagers from all over the valley.
Practicalities
For accommodation try the friendly Hôtel-Restaurant Oued Laou (0648 064435; 100–349dh (£16-28/$26-46/€18-30)) one block from the beach on Boulevard Massira. It is open all year round (large reductions off-season) with hot water and clean, sunny rooms. A few doors down is Hôtel Laayoune (no phone; 200–349dh (£16-28/$26-46/€18-30)) which has a few basic rooms but is only open in summer. Camping Oued Laou (no phone) alongside the municipal building, is a secure site, shaded with olive trees, with hot showers and washing facilities, a small shop and a café. Camping fees are reasonable and there are three two-bedroom bungalows (300dh a night) that will comfortably house four adults or a family. Hôtel Mares Norstrum (0664 375056, 700–1499dh (£80-120/$131-196/€88-132)) 4km north, signposted off the N16 is the area’s upmarket option, situated on a cliff overlooking the sea. Guests are accommodated in comfortable bungalows and there is a swimming pool and restaurant.
For meals, head to Chez Raes, a small fish restaurant across from Hôtel Laayoune. The fish is very fresh, being caught fifty metres in front of the restaurant. Walking northwards down the beach you will eventually come to a rocky outcrop where Café Picasso is built into the rock, made from driftwood and reeds, like something out of Robinson Crusoe. This café restaurant, whose owner has been cooking up tajines on the beach for over a decade, is a great place to relax.
If you want to continue from Oued Laou to Chefchaouen the easiest way, without your own transport, is to take a taxi to Kâaseras, a small village on the beach twenty minutes drive from Oued Laou, where there is one bus daily (check with locals) to Chefchaouen at 6am.
Chefchaouen (Chaouen, Xaouen) and around
Shut in by a fold of mountains, CHEFCHAOUEN (pronounced “shef-sha-wen”, sometimes abbreviated to Chaouen) had, until the arrival of Spanish troops in 1920, been visited by just three Westerners. Two were missionary explorers: Charles de Foucauld, a Frenchman who spent just an hour in the town, disguised as a rabbi, in 1883, and William Summers, an American who was poisoned by the townsfolk here in 1892. The third, in 1889, was the British journalist Walter Harris, whose main impulse, as described in his book, Land of an African Sultan, was “the very fact that there existed within thirty hours’ ride of Tangier a city in which it was considered an utter impossibility for a Christian to enter”.
This impossibility – and Harris very nearly lost his life when the town was alerted to the presence of “a Christian dog” – had its origins in the foundation of the town in 1471. The region hereabouts was already sacred to Muslims due to the presence of the tomb of Moulay Abdessalam Ben Mchich – patron saint of the Djebali tribesmen and one of the “four poles of Islam” – and over the centuries acquired a considerable reputation for pilgrimage and marabouts – “saints”, believed to hold supernatural powers. The town was actually established by one of Moulay Abdessalam’s shereefian (descendant of the Prophet) followers, Moulay Rachid, as a secret base from which to attack the Portuguese in Ceuta and Ksar es Seghir. In the ensuing decades, as the population was boosted by Muslim and Jewish refugees from Spain, Chefchaouen grew increasingly anti-european and autonomous. For a time, it was the centre of a semi-independent emirate, exerting control over much of the northwest, in alliance with the Wattasid sultans of Fes. Later, however, it became an almost completely isolated backwater. When the Spanish arrived in 1920, they were astonished to find the Jews here speaking medieval Castilian.
These days, a major hotel disfigures the twin peaks (ech-Chaoua: the horns) from which the town takes its name, but local attitudes towards visitors are relaxed, the Medina pensions are among the friendliest and cheapest around, and staying here a few days and walking in the hills remains one of the best possible introductions to Morocco.
As the centre of so much maraboutism, Chefchaouen and its neighbouring villages have a particularly large number of moussems. The big events are those in Moulay Abdessalam Ben Mchich (40km away: usually in May) and Sidi Allal el Hadj (in Aug).
Arrival, orientation and information
With a population of around 45,000, Chefchaouen is more like a large village than a town in size and feel, and confusing only on arrival. Buses drop you at the gare routière, 15dh by petit taxi to Place Outa el Hammam or twenty to thirty minutes’ walk to the town centre: take Avenue Mohammed Abdou eastward (and upward) for 300m to the next main junction, where you turn left up Avenue Mohammed V, which leads into the centre of town. Grands taxis from Tetouan and Ouezzane drop much more centrally on Avenue Allal Ben Abdallah. The marketplace is in the Ville Nouvelle alongside Avenue Hassan II, which is dominated by the Ben Rachid mosque. There’s a PTT here, plus Wafa, BMCE and Banque Populaire banks, all with ATMs. Banque Populaire also has a bureau de change, open daily, up in Place Outa el Hammam. Internet access is available at outahammam.com (daily 9am–10pm, later in summer), located between Place Outa el Hammam and Place el Makhzen, and upstairs by Café Mondial (same hours) on Avenue Hassan II, nearly opposite Bab el Ain. There is also a small internet café across from Hôtel Parador.
The main gateway to the Medina, Bab el Ain, is a tiny arched entrance at the junction of Avenue Hassan II with Rue Moulay Ali Ben Rachid. Through the gate a clearly dominant lane winds up through the town to the main square, Place Outa el Hammam (flanked by the gardens and towers of the kasbah) and, beyond, to a second, smaller square, Place el Makhzen.
Accommodation
Along and around the main route in the Medina there are a number of small pensions, most of them converted from private houses; rooms can be a bit cell-like, but most are exceptionally clean and remarkably inexpensive. For more comfort (though less community interaction), several of the hotels in the Ville Nouvelle are good value, and there’s also an old Spanish parador in the heart of the Medina.
The recommendations below are in the Medina or just outside. Chefchaouen can get bitterly cold during winter and all of those listed proclaim to have hot water, though few have en-suite bathrooms.
Auberge Dardara 11km from Chefchaouen at the junction of the N2 to Al Hoceima and the P28 to Ouezzane 0539 707007. Guests, including King Mohammed VI, come here to experience a unique blend of rustic getaway and agri-tourism. The brainchild of local man El Hababi Jaber (“Jabba”), the auberge has twelve comfortably furnished rooms – each named after an influential woman in Jabba’s life – and focuses on environmentally friendly practices and community involvement. The restaurant serves fresh, hearty food. Compulsory half-board 700–999dh (£56-80/$92-131/€61-88)
Camping Azilan Located on a hill above the Medina, follow signs for the Atlas Riad Chaouen Hotel 0539 986979, www.campingchefchaouen.com. Shaded and inexpensive, with a café, small shop, and internet café but can be crowded in summer. A good place to enquire about mountain treks.
Dar Antonio Rue Garnata 0552 278569. Owner Hicham’s imagination has touched every tiny detail of this cosy guesthouse. Each room is unique, colorful and warm. There’s even one with a working fireplace. Guests have access to a kitchen for self catering and showers are in a cave-like grotto. 100–199dh (£8-16/$13-26/€9-18)
Dar Menziana Rue Zagdud 0539 987806, www.darmezianahotel.com. The Medina’s most luxurious guesthouse with comfortable and tastefully decorated en-suite rooms and suites overlooking an open-plan courtyard and kitchen. Panoramic views from the terrace and a hammam to top it off. 500–699dh (£40-56/$65-92/€44-61)
Dar Terrae Av Hassan I 0539 987598. Chefchaouen’s first riad, in a charming old Andalucian-style house. There’s a homely atmosphere and though not all rooms are en suite, each is different and comes with a fireplace, and there are three roof terraces. Breakfast included. 350–499dh (£28-40/$46-65/€30-44)
Hostal Gernika 49 Onsar 0539 987434. This old house has been superbly converted by its female Basque owner. It’s in the higher quarter of the Medina, going up towards Bab Onsar. Some rooms are en suite. 100–199dh (£8-16/$13-26/€9-18)
Hostal Yasmina 12 Rue Lalla el Hora 0539 883118. Small, bright and clean with only six rooms, but very conveniently located, just off the Medina’s main square, modern in style, and a very pleasant little place to stay. Hot showers 10dh. 100–199dh (£8-16/$13-26/€9-18)
Hôtel Andaluz 1 Rue Sidi Salem 0539 986034. Small, functional pension, whose rooms face an inner courtyard with a friendly management, shared showers and a kitchen. It’s signposted off to the left at the near end of Pl Outa el Hammam. 100–199dh (£8-16/$13-26/€9-18)
Hôtel Chams Rue Lalla el Hora 0539 987784. A new option and a good compromise between pension price and hotel comfort. Centrally located with large clean en-suite rooms and a pleasant terrace. 100–199dh (£8-16/$13-26/€9-18)
Hôtel Madrid Av Hassan II just outside the Medina 0539 987496, 0539 987498. Tastefully decorated, with a fine panoramic rooftop breakfast terrace and most rooms en suite with four-poster beds and slightly garish decor. Breakfast included. 500–699dh (£40-56/$65-92/€44-61)
Hôtel Parador de Chefchaouen Pl el Makhzen 0539 986136, www.hotel-parador.com. The former Spanish “grand hotel”, once part of the Parador chain, now reconstructed for the package-tour trade. The bar and swimming pool help justify the expense and there are stunning views from the terrace. However, if you’re only having an occasional splurge, this isn’t special enough. 500–699dh (£40-56/$65-92/€44-61)
Hôtel Salam 39 Av Hassan II 0539 986239. A friendly place just below Bab el Hammam, and long a favourite with individuals and groups. Back rooms and a shady roof terrace overlook the valley. Bathrooms are shared and meals are served in a salon or on the terrace. Breakfast included. 100–199dh (£8-16/$13-26/€9-18)
Pension la Castellana 4 Rue Bouhali 0539 986295. Just to the left at the near end of Place Outa el Hammam – follow the signs. Aficionados return loyally to the Castellana each year, creating a distinctly laid-back and youthful atmosphere; others take one look at the poky rooms and leave. The key is the manager, Mohammed Nebrhout, who arranges communal meals and excursions on request. There’s also a hammam right next door. 100–199dh (£8-16/$13-26/€9-18)
Pension Cordoba Rue Garnata 0664 430044. Lovely rooms and tasteful decor in a charming old Andalucian-style house, beautifully done out. Not quite a riad, but a lot cheaper than one. Breakfast included. 100–199dh (£8-16/$13-26/€9-18)
Pension Ibn Batouta 31 Rue Abie Khancha 0539 986044. One of the quietest of the pensions, with less of a “travellers’ hangout” feel; located in an alley to the left, about 70m along from Bab el Ain, beyond the Restaurant Assada. Rooms are very cheap if a little dingy, bathrooms shared (hot showers 5dh). 99dh or under (under £8/$13/€9)
Youth Hostel Next to Camping Azilan. Very basic rooms available for 30dh per person per night, bedding not provided. Showers cost 10dh.
The town and river
Like Tetouan, Chefchaouen’s architecture has a strong Andalucian character: less elaborate (and less grand), perhaps, but often equally inventive. It is a town of extraordinary light and colour, its whitewash tinted with blue and edged by soft, golden, stone walls – and it is a place which, for all its present popularity, still seems redolent of the years of isolation.
The souks and Mellah
Souks are held on Mondays and Thursdays in the market square and are worth browsing. The town’s carpet and weaving workshops remain active and many of their designs unchanged.
Since the Medina is so small, it is more than ever a place to enjoy exploring at random. It’s interesting to observe the contrasts in feel between the main, Arab part of Chefchaouen and the still modestly populated Jewish quarter of the Mellah. This is to be found behind the jewellers’ souk, between the Bab el Ain and the kasbah.
Place Outa el Hammam and the kasbah
Place Outa el Hammam is where most of the town’s evening life takes place. On the northern end, on Zankat el Targui, in amongst the run-of-the-mill tourist stalls are a few souvenir shops that typify the place’s relaxed feel. Further up beyond Zankat el Targui at 75 Rue Adarve Chabu, also known as Rue Granada, is the tiny shop of the local hat man who sells distinctive woollen beanies, berets and leg-warmers, all great for fending off the evening chill.
On one side of the square is the town’s kasbah (daily except Tues 9am–1pm & 3–6pm; 10dh), a quiet ruin with shady gardens and a little museum of crafts and old photos. The kasbah was built, like so many others in northern Morocco, by Moulay Ismail. Inside, and immediately to the right, in the first of its compounds, are the old town prison cells, where Abd el Krim was imprisoned after his surrender in nearby Targuist in 1926. Five years earlier, he had driven the Spanish from the town, a retreat that saw the loss of several thousand of their troops. Next to the kasbah is the Great Mosque, with a fifteenth-century octagonal tower.
Place el Makhzen and Ras el Ma
Place el Makhzen – the old “government square” – is an elegant clearing with an old fountain and souvenir stalls. Next to Hôtel Parador and not particularly interesting, is the Ensemble Artisanal.
If you leave the Medina at this point, it’s possible to follow the river, the Oued el Kebir, around the outside of the walls, with Bab Onsar up to your left. Here, past a couple of traditional flour-mills, Ras el Ma (head of the water) lies outside the top, eastern side of the town, where water, clear and freezing cold (tapped for the town’s supply) cascades from the gorge wall. Local women come here to do laundry and it has long been a favourite picnic spot, as well as being a holy place, due to the nearby marabout’s tomb of Sidi Abdallah Habti.
Over to the southeast of the town, an enjoyable, half-hour walk brings you to the ruined “Spanish Mosque”. It is set on a hilltop, with exterior patterned brickwork and an interior giving a good sense of the layout of a mosque – normally off-limits in Morocco.
Into the hills
Alongside the path to the Spanish Mosque are some spectacular rock-climbing pitches, frequented by European climbers (ask at Dar Antonio or Camping Azilan for trekking and climbing information); and in the limestone hills behind there are active cave systems – the source of local springs.
Further afield, a good day’s hike is to head east, up over the mountains behind Chefchaouen. As you look at the “two horns” from town, there is a path winding along the side of the mountain on your left. A four-hour (or more) hike will take you up to the other side, where a vast valley opens up, and if you walk further, you’ll see the sea. The valley, as even casual exploration will show, is full of small farms cultivating kif – as they have done for years. Walking here, you may occasionally be stopped by the military, who are cracking down on foreign involvement in the crop. For more ambitious hikes – and there are some wonderful paths in the area – ask at the pensions (or Camping Azilan) about hiring a guide. Someone knowledgeable can usually be found to accompany you, for around 150dh a day; the harder the climb, the more it costs.
Eating
Most of Chefchaouen’s better restaurants are in the back streets of the Medina. Place Outa el Hammam is one of the prime spots for a meal, and its restaurants are surprisingly cheap, though not all of them are that great – be particularly wary of any which have pre-fried fish lying out. Alcohol is only available in the larger hotels and upscale guesthouses.
Medina
Chez Fouad Rue Adarve Chabu. A poky little place known for its tajines and fish kebabs. Cheap.
Granada opposite Chez Fouad on Rue Adarve Chabu. Extremely cheap, with quite reasonable food (chicken and chips, tajines), but nothing tremendously exciting.
Restaurant Assada on a nameless lane just north of Bab el Ain, opposite the Hôtel Bab el Ain. This has long been a favourite and has recently extended across the lane and above to an open terrace. Very friendly, and serves food all day from breakfast through to tajine or couscous at dinner. Cheap.
Restaurant La Lampe Magique Casa Alladin Zenkat el Targui. Two floors and a terrace, beautifully done out in Arabian Nights style, as its name suggests, serving great tajines, couscous (including vegetarian) and other staple fare (set menus 75dh & 100dh). Moderate.
Restaurant Pekin Pl Outa el Hammam. The middle of three restaurants (the other two are Morisco and Bab Kasba) in a row on the square, directly opposite the kasbah. All three serve fairly standard Moroccan food and are open from breakfast till late. Moderate.
Restaurant Tissemlal Zenkat el Targui 0539 986153. A beautifully decorated old house with French-Moroccan set menu (60dh). There are a few rooms here, too; a double room with half-board (500–699dh (£40-56/$65-92/€44-61)).
Ville Nouvelle
Restaurant al Azhar At the bottom of the steps on Av Moulay Idriss. Popular local eatery with good food and friendly and efficient service. Cheap.
Restaurant Moulay Ali Berrachid Rue Moulay Ali Ben Rachid – just up from Bab el Ain. A popular restaurant, specializing in fresh fish. Cheap.
Moving on
The gare routière is a fifteen-minute walk southwest from the town centre – head south from Place Mohammed V down Avenue Mohammed V, cross Avenue Abdelkrim el Kattabi, and turn right after 200m down Avenue Mohammed Abdou (no street sign at the junction). A petit taxi from Bab el Ain shouldn’t cost much more than 15dh.
Unfortunately, CTM and most other lines start their Chefchaouen routes elsewhere so that buses can (despite promises) arrive full, with no available space. The best advice is to visit the bus station the evening before you plan to leave and, if possible, book a ticket in advance.
Availability tends to be best on the routes to Tetouan, Tangier or Fnideq – indeed, Tetouan has at least one departure every hour between 6am and 6pm, and sometimes as many as four. Services to Fes and Meknes are more likely to be full, and you may have to take a grand taxi to Ouezzane and another to Jorf to pick up onward transport there.
Grands taxis for Ouezzane and Bab Berred (connecting there for Issaguen and points east) leave from around the junction of Avenue Allal Ben Abdallah with Avenue Zerktouni near the market. For Tangier and Tetouan, they leave from Avenue Jamal Dine el Afghani, off the west side of Place Mohammed V. To reach Fes or Meknes, you can change vehicles at Ouezzane and again at Jorf (where, be warned, grands taxis to Fes and Meknes are sparse, and you’ll probably end up having to wait for a bus) or travel in style by chartering a grand taxi – you’ll need to bargain hard, but the trip should cost around 450dh for up to six passengers.
Ouezzane (Wazzan)
Few tourists stay in OUEZZANE, 60km southwest of Chefchaouen, but there are worse places to be stranded. Situated at the edge of the Rif, it traditionally formed the border between the Bled es-Makhzen (the governed territories) and the Bled es-Siba (those of the lawless tribes). As such, the town was an important power base, and particularly so under the last nineteenth-century sultans, when its local sheikhs became among the most powerful in Morocco.
The sheikhs – the Ouezzani – were the spiritual leaders of the influential Tabiya brotherhood. They were shereefs (descendants of the Prophet) and came in a direct line from the Idrissids, the first and founding dynasty of Morocco. This however, seems to have given them little significance. In the eighteenth century, Moulay Abdallah es-Shereef established a zaouia at Ouezzane, which became a great place of pilgrimage.
Until the beginning of the twentieth century Jews and Christians were allowed to take only temporary residence in the town. However, in 1877, an Englishwoman, Emily Keane, married the principal shereef, Si Abdesslem. The marriage was, of course, controversial. For several decades she lived openly as a Christian in the town, and is credited with introducing vaccinations to Morocco. Her Life Story, published in 1911 after her husband’s death, ends with the balanced summing up: “I do not advise anyone to follow in my footsteps, at the same time I have not a single regret.” She is commemorated in the Anglican church in Tangier
Ouezzane is also a place of pilgrimage for Moroccan Jews, who come here twice a year (April & Sept) to visit the tomb of Rabbi Amrane ben Diwane, an eighteenth-century Jewish marabout buried in a Jewish cemetery north of town.
The R410
If you have your own transport and wish to head towards the west coast from Chefchaouen, the R410 to Ksar el Kebir is a highly recommended scenic route and shortcut. The road is signed off the N13 to Ouezzane on your right coming from Chefchaouen. The route wends its way through wooded high country following the Oued Loukos to the Barrage Oued el Makhazine, where there are magnificent vistas, and on to Ksar el Kebir.
Arrival, information and accommodation
The bus and grand taxi terminal is about 50m below the Place de l’Indépendance, where you’ll also find three small hotels. The best of these, though it’s by no means deluxe, is the Grand (no phone; 99dh or under (under £8/$13/€9)). The Marhaba (100–199dh (£8-16/$13-26/€9-18)) and Horloge (99dh or under (under £8/$13/€9)) are more basic. Hôtel Bouhlal (0553 7907154, 100–199dh (£8-16/$13-26/€9-18)), signposted off the main road (N13) and located below Place de l’Indépendance, is a family home with a few rooms and currently the town’s most comfortable option. The only other choice is Motel Rif, 4km out on the Fes road (0537 907172), which offers en-suite rooms, camping facilities, and a swimming pool. A farm supplies all the food for its large restuarant. There is a hammam on Avenue Mohammed V and a handful of grill-cafés on the square.
The Town
The Zaouia, distinguished by an unusual octagonal minaret is the site of a lively spring moussem, or pilgrimage festival. As in the rest of Morocco, entrance to the zaouia area is forbidden to non-Muslims.
The main souks climb up from an archway on the main square, Place de l’Indépendance, by the Grand Hôtel. Ouezzane has a local reputation for its woollen rugs – most evident in the weavers’ souk, around Place Rouida near the top end of the town. Also rewarding is the metalworkers’ souk, a covered lane under the Mosque of Moulay Abdallah Shereef; to find it, ask directions for the pleasant (and adjacent) Café Bellevue. The town has an Ensemble Artisanal on Place de l’Indépendance, and there is a large Thursday souk down the hill from here, near the bus station.
Moving on
Ouezzane provides a useful link if you’re travelling by public transport (bus or grand taxi) between Chefchaouen and the Atlantic coast. There are also a fair number of buses to Meknes and Fes, but if you’re stopping or staying, buy onward tickets in advance; as with Chefchaouen it’s not unusual for them to arrive and leave full. Grands taxis occasionally run direct to Fes, but usually you have to take one to the truck-stop village of Jorf and pick up onward transport there. If you arrive early in the day, you should find grands taxis from Jorf to Fes, but otherwise, and for Meknes, you will have to take a bus.
Travel details
Trains
Tangier to: Asilah (6 daily; 40min); Casablanca Voyageurs (3 direct & 3 connecting daily; 5hr 15min); Fes (1 direct & 5 connecting daily; 5hr 10min); Marrakesh (1 direct & 5 connecting daily; 9hr 40min); Meknes (1 direct & 5 connecting daily; 4hr 15min); Oujda (1 direct & 2 connecting daily; 11hr 40min); Rabat (3 direct & 3 connecting daily; 4hr 15min); Souk el Arba (5 daily; 2hr); Taza (1 direct & 3 connecting daily; 7hr 50min).
Buses
Asilah to: Larache (25 daily; 1hr); Tangier (25 daily; 40min).
Chefchaouen to: Al Hoceima (1 CTM daily; 4hr 30min); Casablanca (3 daily; 9hr); Fes (3 CTM and 8 others daily; 5hr); Fnideq (4 daily; 2hr 30min); Meknes (4 daily; 5hr 30min); Rabat (5 daily; 8hr); Tangier (1 CTM and 9 others daily; 3hr 30min); Tetouan (2 CTM daily & others at least hourly 6am–6pm; 2hr).
Larache to: Asilah (3 CTM & 22 others daily; 1hr); Ksar el Kebir (8 daily; 40min); Meknes (2 daily; 5hr 30min); Rabat (20 daily; 3hr 30min); Souk el Arba (8 daily; 1hr).
Ouezzane to: Chefchaouen (4 daily; 2hr); Fes (3 daily; 5hr 30min); Meknes (2 daily; 4hr); Tangier (1 daily; 5hr).
Souk el Arba to: Moulay Bousselham (5 daily; 35min); Ouezzane (3 daily; 1hr 30min).
Tangier to: Agadir (1 CTM & 1 other daily; 16hr); Al Hoceima (7 daily; 6hr); Asilah (3 CTM & 22 others daily; 40min); Casablanca (4 CTM & 35 others daily; 6hr 30min); Chefchaouen (1 CTM & 9 others daily; 4hr 30min); Fes (3 CTM & 9 others daily; 5hr 45min); Fnideq (for Ceuta) (13 daily; 1hr); Larache (3 CTM & 22 others daily; 1hr 30min); Marrakesh (1 CTM & 6 others daily; 10hr); Meknes (3 CTM & 9 others daily; 7hr); Nador (6 daily; 12hr); Rabat (5 CTM and 35 others daily; 5hr); Tetouan (2 CTM and over 50 others daily; 1hr 30min).
Tetouan to: Agadir (1 CTM bus daily; 15hr); Al Hoceima (2 CTM and 9 others daily; 5hr 30min); Casablanca (2 CTM & 23 others daily; 6hr); Chefchaouen (2 CTM & 20 others daily; 1hr 30min); Fes (3 CTM & 4 others daily; 5hr 20min); Fnideq (for Ceuta) (12 daily; 1hr); Larache (6 daily; 3hr); Marrakesh (1 CTM & 7 others daily; 10hr); Meknes (2 CTM & 5 others daily; 6hr); Nador (1 CTM & 7 others daily; 9hr 30min); Oued Laou (5 daily; 1hr 30min); Rabat (2 CTM & 18 others daily; 5hr); Tangier (1 CTM & some 50 others daily; 1hr 30min).
Grands taxis
Asilah to: Larache (40min); Tangier (40min).
Chefchaouen to: Bab Berred (50min); Ouezzane (1hr 15min); Tangier (2hr); Tetouan (1hr).
Fnideq to: Ceuta border (10min); Mdiq (20min); Tangier (1hr); Tetouan (20min).
Ksar el Kebir to: Larache (30min); Ouezzane (1hr); Souk el Arba (30min).
Larache to: Asilah (40min); Ksar el Kebir (30min).
Mdiq to: Fnideq (for Ceuta) (30min); Martil (15min); Tetouan (20min).
Ouezzane to: Chefchaouen (1hr 15min); Jorf (change for Fes) (45min); Ksar el Kebir (1hr); Souk el Arba (1hr).
Souk el Arba to: Ksar el Kebir (30min); Moulay Bousselham (30min); Ouezzane (1hr).
Tangier to: Asilah (40min); Chefchaouen (2hr); Fnideq (for Ceuta) (1hr); Ksar es Seghir (30min); Tetouan (1hr).
Tetouan to: Chefchaouen (1hr); Fnideq (for Ceuta) (20min); Martil (15min); Mdiq (20min); Oued Laou (1hr); Tangier (1hr).
Ferries
Ceuta to: Algeciras (12–30 daily; 45min–1hr 30min).
Tangier to: Algeciras (12–22 daily; 1hr 30min–2hr 30min); Genoa (1 weekly; 48hr); Gibraltar (1 weekly; 1hr 20min); Sète (1–2 weekly; 36hr); Tarifa, passage for EU passport holders only (4–10 daily; 35min).
Flights
Tangier to: Casablanca (RAM 1–3 daily; 50min).