 Bab Doukkala / The Old City, Essaouira |
 From the fiery brick-red of Marrakech to the lemon tints of Meknes, Morocco’s older cities seem to be colour-coded.
The sleepy Atlantic port of Essaouira is a huddle of whitewashed cubes, trimmed in Mediterranean blue: an arresting yet restful combination and reward enough for the drive from Marrakech. Once this was once the city of purple, as the dyes for the imperial robes of Rome were extracted from shellfish harvested offshore.
From Phoenician times the city they called Mogador was the sea port for Timbuktu, trading European goods for gold, salt, ostrich feathers – and slaves from Black Africa. Privateers like Sir Francis Drake called by uninvited, until an eighteenth-century Sultan commissioned a French architect to lay out a fortified city protected by imposing ramparts.
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