Some places you remember by what you saw. Essaouira I remember by what I felt on my skin: a white so bright it dissolves the details, and a wind that never once stopped the whole time I was there.
It is the city the wind built, and the city the wind still runs. Come with me into it.
A white you can almost taste
Essaouira is white. A shining, faded, decadent white. The light and the air are white too, so bright that it becomes genuinely hard to focus on any single detail, and the whole town seems to shimmer.
And then there is the wind. It is the leitmotif of the place, constant and insistent, and it carries the smell of the Atlantic, of salt and brine, into every alley and every conversation. Resisting it would be tiring and pointless, so I did the only sensible thing: I let it carry me, and I started to wander.
The Portuguese who fortified it called it Mogador. Its Arabic name, Essaouira, is usually translated as “the beautifully designed”, and you feel why the moment you look at the plan of it: a small, almost perfect town of little streets set at right angles, all converging on a main avenue with its beautiful arcade. It is one of the very few medinas in Morocco you cannot really get lost in, which is its own kind of gift.
That design is not an accident, and it is why the medina has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2001: it is a rare example of a late-eighteenth-century fortified town, laid out by a European engineer for a Moroccan sultan, where North African and European ideas of a city meet in the same walls.
What to see and do in Essaouira
Wander, and let the walls surprise you
The white ramparts are studded with turquoise: doors and window frames in painted wood, and shopfront after shopfront of local craft. Moorish lamps, tadelakt, embroidered fabrics, carpets, and above all thuya, the fragrant local wood that Essaouira’s craftspeople turn into marquetry known across Morocco.
Stop, talk, and drink the tea
The right way to buy something here is slowly. Stop and talk and haggle with the shopkeepers who draw you in, do it with a smile and real interest in what they make, and within minutes stools will appear from nowhere and you will be handed a glass of the best mint tea in the world, scalding, in a small beautiful glass. Buying my pipe took the better part of an hour, three glasses of tea, a great deal of laughter and many trials, strictly with the caramel tobacco I love. That hour was the purchase. The pipe was a souvenir of it.
The Mellah
Visit the Mellah, the old Jewish quarter. No longer inhabited by the community that built it, and visibly decayed, it nonetheless keeps a real and moving atmosphere. Essaouira was once one of the great Jewish centres of Morocco, and the quarter is being slowly restored, so some of what I saw crumbling may now be shored up.
The port and the fish market
Down at the harbour, time slips backwards. Old blue fishing boats, fishermen mending nets, shipwrights patching wooden hulls perhaps for the thousandth time, and gulls that still live among the rocks and the pier rather than on rooftops and landfill as they do where I live. The life of a working harbour enchants me like an old novel.
Beside it is the fish market, and I will be honest with you: it asks you to set aside your usual idea of hygiene. Walking through it is like stepping into an eighteenth-century Flemish painting, only brighter, louder, thick with the smell of the catch and busy with flies. Watching the fishmongers kneel to fillet fish on a flat stone made me think, not for the last time on that trip, about how far my everyday life sits from this one.
The Skala and the ramparts
Lose an hour on the Skala de la Ville, the sea bastion with its line of old bronze cannons pointing out at the Atlantic, and the Skala du Port by the harbour. Walk through the great studded gate and along the battlements, and try not to imagine the centuries of people who passed this way. I couldn’t. Mine, inevitably, all looked like characters out of Salgari.
You may also find them oddly familiar for another reason: these ramparts played the city of Astapor in Game of Thrones, which has brought a whole new set of pilgrims to the walls.
The beach, and the wind’s other face
Essaouira’s long beach is swept by that same relentless Atlantic wind, which is wonderful if you have come to sail, surf, kite or windsurf, and the bay is one of the best places in Africa to learn. It is less wonderful if, like me that afternoon, you had pictured a nap on a sunbed after a feast of grilled fish, and instead met a gale turning the sand into tiny stinging bullets. A strong wind is a blessing under sail. On a towel, less so. Consider yourself warned, and check the forecast if lying still is your plan.
The music: why Essaouira is more than pretty
Here is the part the original version of this piece missed entirely, and the part that, given my own years working in music, I should have led with.
Essaouira is one of the spiritual homes of Gnawa music, the hypnotic, trance-inducing music brought to Morocco by sub-Saharan communities centuries ago, built on the three-stringed guembri, iron castanets and call-and-response chant that can carry a room into a genuine trance. UNESCO added Gnawa to its Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2019, and Essaouira is now recognised as a UNESCO Creative City of Music.
Every June the city gives itself over to the Gnaoua World Music Festival, sometimes called Africa’s Woodstock, when hundreds of thousands of people fill the medina and the squares and the beach for three days, and Gnawa masters, the maâlems, share the stage with jazz, blues and world musicians from everywhere. Most of it is free, spilling out across Place Moulay Hassan and the ramparts and the sand from sunset deep into the night. In 2026 it runs from 25 to 27 June. If you can time a visit to it, do, and book your bed months ahead, because the whole city sells out.
Even outside the festival, this is a town that has drawn musicians for sixty years. Jimi Hendrix famously passed through in 1969, and the myths about which song he wrote here are mostly untrue and entirely part of the local charm.
How to plan your visit
As a day trip from Marrakech. Essaouira is about 175 kilometres west of Marrakech, and the drive across the Haouz plain and the argan country takes around two and a half to three hours each way. There is no train: Marrakech is the end of the line, so every route is by road.
I did it in a day, negotiating a taxi in Marrakech to take me, wait, and bring me back. That still works, and so do organised day tours, but the honest cheaper option today is the coach: Supratours and CTM run comfortable, reliable buses from Marrakech several times a day for a fraction of a private car. Agree any taxi price in full before you set off, and expect it to have risen a good deal since the forty euros or so I paid back in 2010.
But if you can, do not do it in a day. This is the one thing I would change about my own trip. Essaouira empties of day-trippers in the late afternoon, and the light going gold on those white walls, the town breathing out, the evening in the fish restaurants by the port, is the version of the city worth staying for. Two or three nights in a riad inside the walls is the trip I wish I had taken, and the one I would send you on.
A note on the wind and the season. Those Atlantic trade winds keep Essaouira around ten degrees cooler than Marrakech in summer, which is a mercy in July and August, but they blow hardest from spring through summer. Spring and autumn are the sweet spot for wandering rather than watersports.
What I missed. In my pre-trip notes I had written down the Sidi Mohammed ben Abdallah Museum, dedicated to the region’s art and traditions, and I only realised afterwards that I never went, and cannot for the life of me remember why. Lack of time, a closing day, my usual slippage from the plan. If you go, tell me what I missed.
The city keeps its promise
Essaouira embraced me, wind and salt and white light and all, and it did not let go for years afterwards. It is the rare town that is genuinely enhanced by being a little uncomfortable: the wind that will not let you nap is the same wind that keeps it cool, fills its sails, and has made it, for centuries, a place people arrive at and do not quite manage to leave.
Go for a day if a day is all you have. But I think it will make you wish you had stayed.
Surgissant du silence d’une première torpeur, la mer en son éclat d’origine et rebelle, d’une houle alanguie cerne la citadelle, et les yeux des mortels sont oubli de stupeur. Essaouira !…
Further reading
- The Gnaoua World Music Festival official site, for dates and the programme
- My long weekend in Marrakech, the usual gateway to Essaouira
- My guide to the hammam, a ritual worth building into any Morocco trip
FAQ
Is Essaouira worth visiting? Yes. Essaouira is one of Morocco’s most atmospheric towns: a UNESCO-listed walled medina on the Atlantic, whitewashed and easy to explore, with a working fishing port, a strong craft tradition in thuya wood, excellent seafood, and a famous Gnawa music culture. Its constant Atlantic wind also makes it a leading spot for surfing and windsurfing.
How do you get from Marrakech to Essaouira? Essaouira lies about 175 kilometres west of Marrakech, a drive of roughly two and a half to three hours across the argan-growing plains. There is no train, so every route is by road. Supratours and CTM run frequent, affordable coaches from Marrakech, and private taxis and organised day tours are also widely available.
Can you visit Essaouira as a day trip from Marrakech? Yes, and many people do, but staying one or two nights is far better. Day-trippers leave in the late afternoon, and Essaouira is at its most beautiful in the evening light and after dark, when the medina belongs to residents and overnight visitors. If you only have a day, go, but expect to wish you had stayed.
What is the Gnaoua festival in Essaouira? The Gnaoua World Music Festival is a large annual celebration of Gnawa music, a UNESCO-recognised Moroccan tradition, held in Essaouira each June. Gnawa master musicians perform alongside international jazz and world artists across the medina, squares and beach, mostly free of charge. The 2026 edition runs from 25 to 27 June, and accommodation sells out months ahead.
When is the best time to visit Essaouira? Spring and autumn are ideal for exploring the town on foot, with pleasant temperatures and lighter winds. The Atlantic trade winds are strongest from spring into summer, which keeps Essaouira around ten degrees cooler than Marrakech in high summer and makes it excellent for wind and water sports, but less suited to lazing on the beach.
