The Town the Painters Found

Every summer, artists paint murals on the walls of Asilah. By the following summer, the sun and salt have faded them, and new artists come to paint again.

Asilah sits on the Atlantic coast between Tangier and Larache, a small fortified town that has been occupied by the Portuguese, the Spanish, and various Moroccan dynasties since the 15th century. The Portuguese built the ramparts in 1471 — thick stone walls with towers and a sea gate — and they still stand, enclosing a medina that is modest by Moroccan standards. A few thousand people live inside. The streets are narrow, whitewashed, and quiet.

In 1978, two Moroccan artists — Mohamed Melehi and Mohamed Chebaa — founded the Asilah Arts Festival. The idea was simple: invite painters, musicians, and writers to a beautiful town and let them work. The murals were the visible result. Each year, artists were given walls in the medina and permission to paint whatever they wanted. The town became a rotating gallery.

The festival gave Asilah a second life. Before it, the town was a sleepy fishing port with Portuguese ruins. After it, it became a cultural destination — still small, still quiet, but with a reason for people to come. The murals draw photographers. The festival draws intellectuals. The beach draws everyone else.

The ramparts are the best-preserved Portuguese fortifications on the Moroccan coast. You can walk along the top and look out over the Atlantic, where the fishing boats are the same blue as Essaouira's. The Raissouli Palace — the former residence of a notorious early-20th-century warlord who kidnapped a Greek-American businessman and demanded ransom from Teddy Roosevelt — sits inside the walls, sometimes open, sometimes not.

Asilah is two hours from Tangier by car, thirty minutes by train. Most visitors come for the day. The ones who stay the night discover that after the day-trippers leave, the medina belongs to the cats and the sound of the ocean against the Portuguese walls.