Marrakech

Marrakech was founded in the eleventh century as a Berber garrison town, and it has spent the centuries since as a capital, a caravan terminus and a prize fought over by successive dynasties. The medina that survives is theirs: a walled maze of rammed earth, laid out for shade and defence rather than convenience, where the logic of the streets belongs to the people who trade in them, not to visitors trying to find their riad.

The city divides cleanly along the old fault line. Inside the walls, the medina is dense, unplanned and commercial, its souks organised by guild in ways that still roughly hold. Outside, the Ville Nouvelle and the Hivernage district are French Protectorate additions from the early twentieth century, wide boulevards and villas built for colonial administrators, now home to the newer hotels and restaurants.

What makes Marrakech distinct from Morocco's other imperial cities is its relationship with performance. Jemaa el-Fnaa has functioned as a public square for storytellers, traders and musicians for centuries, and it still shifts character through the day, from orange-juice stalls at noon to food stalls and gathered crowds by dusk. The city has always made a living from being watched.

There is also a quieter Marrakech, built by gardeners rather than merchants. The riads with their hidden courtyards, the walled gardens fed by underground irrigation channels dug centuries ago, the palaces designed around pools and shade — these represent an older idea of the city as a refuge from its own heat and noise.