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Marrakech , imperial city, is the 2nd city of Morocco after Casablanca but it is before all the metropolis of the great south. It was founded in the 19th century and throughout its history, it will seek for the asceticism preached by its creators. It is not by chance if this city girdled with ramparts of the color of sands, surmounted by the gigantic wall of the Atlas, is symbolized by the powerful and sober Koutoubia.
Its simple and logic plan of the 12th century where the Kasbah in next to the shopping areas still prevails. However, no other city in Morocco was so mutilated: each dynasty, by seizing the power, made purifying work and destroyed the sumptuous palaces resulting from the Spanish and Moorish refinement of the greatest Moslem empire of the Occident.
Today, the humble tomb stone of the founder Youssef Ben Tachfine and the cold austerity of the Saadiens tombs leave us thoughtful.
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The most southern city of North Africa has always been a place of exchanges between the Sahara, the Atlas and the Atlantic plains. It could not resist the influences of the populations which it attracted. In spite of the interbreeding between the black Harratine , Arabic and Jewish populations, it will keep its Berber influence, which gives it its exuberance and its conservatism: Isn't Jamaa El Fna the geographical center and the “heart” of the current city? The “insane square” from which all the main roads start and where life stops only in the early morning.
One dances there, one plays there, one tells stories there, one can let off steam being indifferently a native (blédard) or a hippie . To start from this place towards the derbs , the labyrinths or towards the broad avenues of the guéliz , it is to discover an infinity of colors; from the most flashy of the bazaars to the most delicate beige-pinkish of its constructions, it is to breathe the repulsive odors of its skins to be tanned and the subtle scents of its garden city. The atmosphere is sometimes sticking, sometimes vaporous.
All the time, the city solicits and when one walks there one cannot escape its duality: excess and rigour.
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