Morocco's Atlantic Riviera — a city rebuilt from nothing after a 1960 earthquake killed 15,000 people, now the kingdom's beach capital where the surf season runs year-round and argan-oil stalls line the souk
Agadir is Morocco's premier beach destination and the country's biggest city south of Marrakech, with a population of 450,000 on the Atlantic coast backed by the Souss-Massa plain and the Anti-Atlas mountains. The original city was entirely destroyed by a catastrophic earthquake on 29 February 1960 (magnitude 5.9, 15 seconds, an estimated 15,000 dead — a third of the population) and rebuilt from scratch on a modern grid. The Agadir Oufella kasbah ruins on the hill above the bay are the only standing remnant of the pre-earthquake city.
The original Agadir was a Berber Amazigh settlement; the Portuguese built a fortified factory (Santa Cruz do Cap de Gué) in 1505, controlling the argan-oil and sugar trade, until the Saadian Sultan Mohammed al-Shaikh expelled them in 1541. The modern city developed under the French Protectorate as a fishing port; it was entirely destroyed on 29 February 1960 in one of the 20th century's most devastating urban disasters. King Mohammed V visited the ruins and declared the city unrepairable and too deeply contaminated by bodies to excavate; the original site was sealed as a mass grave and the ne…