Asilah: The Little White Town That Repaints Itself

Most Moroccan towns ask something of you: a climb, a hill, a maze. Asilah asks almost nothing. It sits flat on the Atlantic about 40 km south of Tangier, a small square of whitewashed houses inside Portuguese walls, with the sea on two sides and the sound of it almost everywhere.

Here is the gentle surprise we keep coming back for. Asilah is not a town that has been preserved — it is a town that is repainted. Every summer, during its long-running cultural moussem, artists are invited to paint murals directly onto the medina walls, and the following year new work goes up in their place. The whitewash is refreshed, the pictures change, the lanes look different. You could come three years running and never see quite the same town twice.

For travelers over 60 this matters in a practical way as well as a poetic one. The whole medina is level, closed to cars, and small enough to cross slowly in twenty minutes. There is no obligatory hill, no long haul between sights. You simply walk, stop, sit on the sea wall, and let the town come to you.

A little history

Asilah is far older than it looks. The site was settled in antiquity, and over the centuries it passed through Phoenician, Roman, Arab, Portuguese, Spanish and finally French and Spanish colonial hands — a long list for a town you can walk across in a quarter of an hour.

The walls you see today are Portuguese. Portugal took the town in 1471 and ringed the medina in heavy stone ramparts and bastions, with gates that still carry their old names: Bab Homar, Bab el Kasba and Bab el Bahr, the Sea Gate. It was from Asilah, in 1578, that the young Portuguese king Sebastian set out on the campaign that ended in his death at the Battle of the Three Kings, near Ksar el-Kebir. Control passed to Spain, and in 1589 the Saadian sultan Ahmad al-Mansur brought the town back under Moroccan rule.

A later chapter gives Asilah its faintly Andalusian air. Under the Spanish protectorate in the early twentieth century, the town gained a small grid of streets outside the walls and a Franciscan church. And in 1978 two local men founded the cultural moussem that changed Asilah's fortunes: the murals began, the medina was scrubbed white, and a quiet fishing town became, once a year, an open-air gallery.

Borj Sidi Mimoun, one of the towers of Asilah's 15th-century Portuguese fortifications, above the Atlantic.

What to see

Asilah's sights are not monuments to be conquered. They are stops on one easy loop, and the loop is the point.

The ramparts and Bab el Bahr

Start at the Sea Gate, Bab el Bahr, where the medina opens straight onto the Atlantic. The walk along the top of the seaward wall is the town's great pleasure: ocean on one side, white houses on the other, benches and low parapets where you can sit for as long as you like. Late afternoon is best, when the stone turns honey-coloured. Note that reaching the rampart walk involves a flight of stone steps without a handrail in places; if that is difficult, the promenade at ground level below gives you much the same view.

The painted medina

Inside the walls, the lanes are narrow, level and paved, lined with blue-and-white doorways, potted geraniums and murals in every state of life — some brand new, some faded to a ghost. Let yourself get mildly lost. The medina is so small that a few minutes in any direction brings you back to a wall or the sea.

Al-Kamra Tower and the Raisuni Palace

Beside the Sea Gate stands the square Al-Kamra Tower, built in the Portuguese period and long used to watch the approaches from the water. A short stroll away is the Raisuni Palace, raised early in the twentieth century for Moulay Ahmed er Raisuni, the local strongman — part rebel, part governor, part kidnapper of Europeans. The interior is generally used for cultural events rather than daily visits, but the terrace walk beside it, high above the rocks, is open and wonderful.

Church of San Bartolomé

Just outside the medina, in the Spanish-era quarter, this white Franciscan church dates from the 1920s and is built in a Moorish style that makes it easy to walk past without noticing. It is a quiet, unexpected corner of Asilah's layered story.

The fishing port

A short walk north of the walls, the small port is where the town earns its living. Boats come in, crates of sardines and squid go out, and the cafés alongside do a steady trade in mint tea. It is flat, unpolished and very real.

A mural on a lane in Asilah's medina — the paintings are renewed over time, so no two visits look alike.

Sand at the edge of town

Asilah's beaches are one reason to stay a night or two rather than pass through. A long, open sand beach begins immediately north of the ramparts and runs for kilometres — flat, easy underfoot, and ideal for a slow morning walk before the day warms up. The Atlantic here is bracing rather than warm, and the current can be lively, so it is a better beach for paddling and sitting than for serious swimming.

A few kilometres south, reached by petit taxi or by the horse-drawn carriages that wait near the town, lies the beach locals call Paradise Beach, a broad crescent below low cliffs. There is little shade and few facilities, so go early, take water and a hat, and agree the return arrangement with your driver before you set off.

Playa de las Cuevas on the Atlantic coast at Asilah.

A day trip nearby

If you want one excursion, make it Larache and Lixus, roughly 40 km south of Asilah — about 45 minutes to an hour by road, by grand taxi or a hired car and driver.

Larache is a faded Spanish-Moroccan port with a circular plaza, blue-and-white balconies and a long sweep of Atlantic beach across the river. Just outside it stand the ruins of Lixus, a Phoenician and later Roman city built on a hillside above the Loukkos estuary, with baths, a small theatre-amphitheatre and the salting tanks where fish sauce was once made for export across the empire.

An honest word: Lixus is a hillside site with rough, uneven ground, loose stones and no shade. If steep, irregular walking is difficult, you can enjoy the setting from the lower terraces and give your time to Larache instead — its seafront and old town are flat and very pleasant. Tangier is also an easy half-day by train if you would rather have a city than ruins.

Honest advice for comfortable travel

• The medina is level and car-free. No slopes to speak of, no traffic, and nothing more than a few hundred metres apart. This is one of the easiest historic centres in Morocco to walk.
• The surfaces are the catch. Lanes are paved but sometimes uneven or slightly slippery when damp, and doorsteps are high. Shoes with grip and a light walking stick are more useful than they look.
• Steps up to the ramparts. The wall walk and some terraces are reached by stone stairs, often without a rail. Take them slowly, or enjoy the same sea view from the promenade below.
• Stay inside or right beside the walls. A riad or small hotel within the medina, or on the seafront just outside it, means nothing you want to see is more than a short stroll away.
• Cars stop at the gates. Taxis cannot enter the medina, so expect a short walk with your luggage; most guesthouses will send someone to help if you ask when booking.
• Think about August twice. The cultural moussem is glorious but the town fills up, rooms are scarce and expensive, and the heat and crowds make the lanes much harder work.
• Sun and wind. The Atlantic breeze disguises the strength of the sun. Hat, sunglasses and water, even on a mild-feeling day.
• Cash and quiet hours. Cash is still king in small cafés and at the port; withdraw in the newer town outside the walls. Many places close in the early afternoon, which is exactly when you should be resting too.

A narrow, level alley in Asilah's medina, typical of the old town's lanes.

What to eat

Asilah eats what its boats bring in. Grilled sardines, plain and perfect with lemon and bread, are the local everyday dish; alongside them you will find sea bream, sole, red mullet, calamari and shrimp, usually simply grilled or fried. Around the port and just outside the medina walls, small family-run places will show you the day's catch and cook whatever you point at.

The Spanish inheritance shows up on plates too — fried fish, seafood salads, paella turning up on menus near the seafront. For something gentler on the stomach, the standard Moroccan comforts are all here: harira soup, chicken tagine with olives and preserved lemon, and bowls of fresh orange juice-bright salads.

Finish with mint tea and a pastry on a terrace facing the water. And if you prefer your fish without bones to negotiate, ask for it filleted when you order — most kitchens will happily oblige.

Getting there

Asilah's waterfront, where the old walls meet the Atlantic.

Our verdict

Asilah will not overwhelm you, and that is precisely its gift. There is no great monument you must see before you die, no punishing climb to a viewpoint, no medina in which you can genuinely lose yourself for hours. There is a small white town by a large grey-blue ocean, a wall to walk along, fish to eat, and pictures on the houses that will be different the next time you come.

We would recommend it warmly as a two- or three-night stop at the start or end of a northern Morocco trip — a soft landing after a flight into Tangier, or a place to slow down before heading home. Pair it with a day in Tangier and, if the legs are willing, an afternoon at Larache.

Come in May or October, take a room within sight of the water, and plan to do very little. Asilah rewards exactly that.

“A town that whitewashes itself each summer and starts its pictures over — as if the sea insisted on a clean page.”

Photo credits

• Assilah Waterfront2: Dans, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
• Borj Sidi Mimoun in Asilah city: OussamaHamama, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
• Alley of the city of Asilah 43434: Buiobuione, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
• Playa de las cuevas, Asilah 14161726789: Maxim Massalitin, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
• Alleys of the city of Asilah 700: Buiobuione, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
• Assilah Waterfront1: Dans, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons