Marrakech's unforgettable heart

In the 1960s and 70s, it was a favourite hippie-bohemian destination. The Rolling Stones tripped here on acid. Cecil Beaton, who happened to be visiting at the time, photographed Mick and Keith by the pool of their hotel.

By the 1980s it had become a favourite destination for backpackers. Today, the words most commonly used to describe Marrakech are "chic" and "elegant". One recent article went so far as to describe it as "a cosmopolitan centre of cool". The city's new airport, a gleaming, soaring structure, elegant and full of confidence, tends to confirm this.

The unforgettable heart of Marrakech is its main square, Jemaa El Fna. Anything but elegant, and not even really a square, its attraction is its sights, sounds and smells. This is sensory-overload territory.

In Jemaa El Fna one is engulfed by the ordinary and the bizarre: orange sellers and henna artists, snake charmers, performing monkeys, acrobats, musicians, old sages offering cures for most conditions, touts and tourists. In the distance - as if Marrakech had been created by a stage-set designer - the Atlas Mountains create a spectacular backdrop.

In the evening, half the square is covered by stalls and tables. The food is laid out, the smoke from the fires rises and the world in microcosm comes to eat.

Off the square are the souks, a vast, seemingly disorganised myriad of shops for tourists and locals alike. Once you get the hang of the place, it is actually far less disorganised than it at first seems.

Here you will find carpets, leatherwork, jewellery, brass, copper, skins, stringed instruments, cotton and much else. Marrakech is not the first place in which my attention has been sought by cries of "Hey, moustache", but it is the place where this cry was most persistent. If being shouted at, charmed, cajoled and enticed with promises of moroccan whisky (the omnipresent mint tea), does not appeal, a more peaceful shopping experience might be the Ensemble Artisanal on avenue Mohammed V, not far from the Koutoubia Mosque.

Here prices are fixed, but generally a bit higher than the prices that can be negotiated in the souks.

For a bit of peace and quiet - and after Jemaa El Fna and the souks, you will need some - head for Le Jardin Majorelle. On the outskirts of Marrakech, the garden was created in the 1920s and 30s by French painter Jacques Majorelle. The garden features marble pools, raised pathways, banana trees, groves of bamboo, more varieties of cacti than I thought existed, coconut palms, bougainvillea and aquatic plants.

Most of the buildings are painted in a dark blue. There is also a lot of bright yellow around. Given that the garden was designed by a painter, it is not surprising that it looks like a painting - a wonderful Mediterranean Matisse comes to mind. Majorelle died in 1962. After years of neglect, the garden was taken over in 1980 and restored by the French fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent and his partner Pierre Berge. The 19-kilometre-long, two-metre-high 12th century ramparts are impressive, as are the Saadian tombs. Dating from the late 16th to the 18th century, and consisting of two mausoleums set in a garden, the tombs of these former rulers are not exactly well signposted, making the search for them almost as fascinating as the tombs themselves.

Not being Muslim, I was not allowed into the 12th century Koutoubia Mosque, one of the largest mosques in the western Islamic world. Nor was I allowed into any of the others - a rule created not by the mosques, or by Moroccans, but by the French colonialists.

By the time I boarded the bus five days later for the three-hour trip to the coastal city of Essaouira, my feelings about Marrakech had become somewhat ambivalent. Perhaps expectations had been raised by all the "cool" hype. Much of the chic and elegance, in the medina (old quarter) at least, is to be found inside its buildings, most of which one never gets to see.

Essaouira (population 70,000), Morocco's most fashionable coastal resort, is laid back and relaxed. In the 1960s and 1970s it was a hippie hangout - Jimi Hendrix even put in an appearance.

The brilliant whiteness of its lime- washed walls, its pleasant climate, the squawk of seagulls, the smell of the sea and it's generally non-commercial atmosphere made it a wonderful antidote to Marrakech.

Because it is not on the Moroccan rail network, it has managed to escape the effects of mass tourism. Here one can look around and shop without attracting much attention, and being much less frequented by tourists, prices are better than in Marrakech. I suspect the longer one stays in Essaouira, the more apparent it becomes that one has not stayed long enough. The journey by bus and train from Essaouira to Fez takes around 10 hours, which is paradoxical given that once one is in Fez, it feels as if you have travelled back in time six or seven centuries. Fez is the world's largest living medieval city. Despite all that the 20th century has brought, the old city's 200,000 inhabitants live pretty much as they have for centuries. For 1000 years, the city has dominated Morocco's religious, cultural and commercial life.The medina of Fez El Bali is reputed to have more than 9000 alleys. The widest street is too narrow for a car and the narrowest barely allow two people to pass - just. As it has been for a millennium, donkeys, mules and humans remain the sole source of transport within the medina.

Nowhere is medieval Fez more apparent than in the Chouara (tanners' quarters). The health and safety conditions of the workers do not bear thinking about. On a hot day, it helps to use the little bundle of mint you are handed as you ascend the stairs to the Terrace, as the smell can be overpowering.

Hides are dipped into a honeycomb of vats that at first glance look like a giant's messy watercolour paint set. Some contain brilliantly coloured dyes, made from seeds and minerals crushed in a small riverside mill; others contain urine and pigeon guano to soften the skins, or chalk and salt, which add intensity to the colour of the dyes.

To stand on the Terrasse de Tannerie, which overlooks the largest of Fez's three tanneries, is guaranteed to take even the most unimaginative on a journey back through time.

Trevor Richards

The Dominion Post.