Essaouira travel guide

Top 10 sights in Essaouira

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1. 

   1

   Medina of Essaouira

   The medina of the old Mogador, World Heritage since 2001 and unlike any other in Morocco: Sultan Mohammed ben Abdallah had it laid out from 1764 on a grid by a French engineer, so the streets run straight and the ramparts are European bastions.

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2. 

   2© Nassima Chahboun · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Simon Attias Synagogue

   A synagogue of 1882 in a town that was close to half Jewish in the nineteenth century, when the sultan settled merchant families here to run the trade with Europe. It has been restored and is now a cultural centre rather than a congregation.

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3. 

   3© Jklamo · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Chaim Pinto Synagogue

   The house and synagogue of Rabbi Chaim Pinto, who died in 1845 and is venerated by Moroccan Jews. Pilgrims come from Israel and France each September, and the rooms are kept as he used them.

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4. 

   4© TomiValny · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Bayt Dakira

   The House of Memory, opened in 2020 in a restored house in the Mellah, devoted to the Jewish community of Essaouira and to Judeo-Moroccan music and liturgy. It was inaugurated by Mohammed VI in person, which was the point of it.

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5. 

   5

   Castelo Real

   A castle the Portuguese built at Mogador in 1506 to control the trade of the coast, held for only a few years and gone by the end of the eighteenth century. The Borj el-Barmil bastion now stands on the site.

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6. 

   6© Elfathiamine · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Slat Lkahal Synagogue

   A synagogue in the Jewish quarter of Essaouira, paid for by the community and built between 1850 and 1859. The town's Jews were once nearly half its population; the building has been restored as a memorial to them.

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7. 

   7© Patrick Nouhailler's… · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Sidi Mohammed ben Abdallah Museum

   A history museum in a nineteenth-century mansion on Rue Laalouj, named after the sultan who founded the town. Gnaoua instruments, Berber jewellery and the marquetry the town still makes from thuya wood make up most of it.

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8. 

   8© TomiValny · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Jewish cemeteries of Essaouira

   Two Jewish cemeteries side by side above the sea, the older one dating from the eighteenth century. The tomb of Rabbi Haim Pinto in it draws a pilgrimage each September from Moroccan Jews now living in Israel, France and Canada.

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9. 

   9© Jerzy Strzelecki · CC BY 3.0

   Sqala of the port

   An artillery platform of the eighteenth century inside the harbour of Essaouira, its line of brass cannon still pointing out to sea. It was part of the defences the sultan's European engineers laid out for the new port.

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10. 

    10© JJ Jones · CC BY 3.0

    Kasbah Mosque

    The oldest mosque in Essaouira, inside the kasbah quarter and named after the sultan who founded the modern town in the 1760s. It has no minaret of the usual height and is easily walked past.

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