Asilah I - Into the Blue

Last week we went with friends to Asilah, about 40 minutes south of Tangiers, on Morocco's Atlantic coast.  Here are a few images of the nice bits.  For more, just click on Fred's well-stocked Flickr site.  And to enlarge any of these shots, just click on the image.

Once part of the Portuguese empire, Asilah languished as a small fishing port until 1978, when two local people started an annual International Arts Festival that now attracts thousands of participants and visitors from all over the Muslim world. 

Adventurous homebuyers from Britain, France and Spain are also being drawn (or is it painted?) to Asilah's chic medina.

Turquoise, forget-me-not, bluebell, sky.  Sapphire, cerulean, lapis lazuli...and a hundred others.  Asilah's Medina homes revel in more blues than there are names for.

The hypnotic colours beckon you around each corner, down narrow alleyways and into tiny squares.

Through the Bab El Kasaba, one of the town's main gates, is the Centre Hassan II des Rencontres Internationales, the venue at the heart of the  Arts Festival held each August.  Last week, roses in every shade and scent of pink were blooming in this courtyard.

Enterprises a thousand centuries apart might well be neighbours in the Medina. This communal bread oven is not far from the shop of a young Moroccan designer, whose swirling cotton and linen skirts, tops and trousers are caught up with elaborate fastenings surely invented by a clever spider.

This traditional large corner house in the Medina felt like a semi-detached Sultan's palace, with several rooms set around its tiled inner courtyard.  The charming young woman who owns this enchanted place wants to sell it so that she can leave Asilah and marry her beloved...

Asilah is well worth visiting, a relatively short journey for a long weekend in a very different culture.  And you can read about one of our cultural excursions in the next post!

Comments

[the highway scribe]

These are amazing, too.