Marrakesh - "Morocco
City", as early travellers
called it - has always been
something of a pleasure city, a
marketplace where the southern
tribesmen and Berber villagers bring
in their goods, spend their money
and find entertainment. For visitors
it's an enduring fantasy - a city of
immense beauty, low, red and
tentlike before a great shaft of
mountains - and immediately
exciting. At the heart of it all is
a square, Djemaa El Fna, really no
more than an open space in the
centre of the city, but the stage
for a long-established ritual in
which shifting circles of onlookers
gather round groups of acrobats,
drummers, pipe musicians, dancers,
storytellers, comedians and
fairground acts. However many times
you return there, it remains
compelling. So, too, do the city's
architectural attractions: the
immense, still basins of the Agdal
and Menara gardens, the delicate
Granada-style carving of the Saadian
Tombs and, above all, the Koutoubia
Minaret, the most perfect Islamic
monument in North Africa.
Unlike Fes, for so long its rival
as the nation's capital, the city
seems much more rooted in the
present than the past. After
Casablanca, Marrakesh is Morocco's
second largest city and its
population continues to rise. It has
a thriving industrial area and is
the most important market and
administrative centre of southern
Morocco. This is not to suggest an
easy prosperity - there is heavy
unemployment and poverty here, as
throughout the country - but a stay
in Marrakesh leaves you with a vivid
impression of life and activity. And
for once this doesn't apply
exclusively to the new city, Gueliz
; the Medina , substantially
in ruins at the beginning of the
twentieth century, was rebuilt and
expanded during the years of French
rule and retains no less significant
a role in the modern city.
The Koutoubia and Saadian Tombs
excepted, Marrakesh is not a place
of great monuments. Its beauty and
attraction lie in the general
atmosphere and spectacular location
- with the magnificent peaks of the
Atlas rising right up behind the
city, hazy in the heat of summer and
shimmering white with the winter
snow.
Marrakesh has Berber
rather than Arab origins, having
developed as the metropolis of Atlas
tribes - Maghrebis from the plains,
Saharan nomads and former slaves
from Africa beyond the desert,
Sudan, Senegal and the ancient
kingdom of Timbuktu. All of these
strands shaped the city's souks and
its way of life, and in the crowds
and performers in Djemaa El Fna,
they can still occasionally seem
distinct.
For most travellers, Marrakesh is
the first experience of the south
and its generally more laid-back
atmosphere and attitudes. Marrakchis
are renowned for their warmth and
sociability, their humour and
directness and there seems a greater
openness too, with women enjoying a
more public presence, often riding
mopeds around on the streets. And
even at its heart, Marrakesh feels
more like a conglomeration of
villages than an urban community,
with quarters formed and maintained
by successive generations of
migrants from the countryside.
