Morocco's whitewashed Atlantic rampart — Portuguese walls, an international mural festival, fresh Atlantic fish, and the quietest beach town on the coast
Asilah is a small Atlantic coast town 46km south of Tangier — a whitewashed medina enclosed by 15th-century Portuguese ramparts on a promontory jutting into the Atlantic, with one of the finest beach stretches in northern Morocco and the most sophisticated arts culture of any small Moroccan town. The Moussem Culturel International d'Asilah, founded in 1978 by Mohammed Benaissa (the town's mayor and former Foreign Minister), brings international artists each August to paint murals on the medina walls — the result is an open-air gallery that changes annually, with some panels becoming permanent…
Asilah (Arzila in Portuguese) was captured by the Portuguese in 1471 and substantially rebuilt as a fortified port — the current ramparts, towers, and the palace of Moulay Ahmed al-Raisuli (the notorious 'raisuli' bandit-diplomat who kidnapped the American citizen Ion Perdicaris in 1904, provoking Theodore Roosevelt's famous 'Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead' ultimatum) all date from this period. The town reverted to Moroccan control in 1549 and passed through Spanish and then definitive Moroccan sovereignty. The agricultural and fishing town of the 19th–20th century declined economically unt…