The Fortress the Portuguese Blew Up

When the Portuguese left Mazagan in 1769, they mined the fortress and lit the fuse. The explosion destroyed the main gate and part of the walls. The rest survived.

El Jadida — the name Morocco gave it after reclaiming it, meaning "the new" — sits on the Atlantic coast between Casablanca and Safi. The Portuguese seized it in 1502, built a fortified city they called Mazagan, and held it for 267 years. The fortifications they constructed — thick stone walls in the Manueline style, with bastions at each corner and a sea gate — are among the best-preserved Portuguese military architecture outside Portugal.

The walls enclose a compact city that looks nothing like a Moroccan medina. The streets are straight and wide. The buildings are European in proportion. The Church of the Assumption still stands, converted to a different use but architecturally intact. The Portuguese cistern sits beneath the main street. The whole ensemble was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2004.

After the Portuguese demolition and evacuation in 1769, the city was abandoned. Sultan Mohammed III repopulated it later with people from surrounding areas, including a Jewish community that established a mellah. The city was rebuilt within and around the Portuguese walls, creating a hybrid — European military architecture filled with Moroccan domestic life.

The ramparts can be walked. The bastions offer views of the Atlantic on one side and the medina rooftops on the other. The stone is weathered grey-white, pitted by salt. The cannons are gone. The ghosts of two empires share the walls in silence.