Modern Essaouira was founded in 1765 by Mohammed III, and was a planned town with a rectangular grid of streets designed by a French architect. It was planned as a trading and export center linking the Sahara trade routes to Europe and later the United States with its port. The reason for picking Essaouira was that it had a good natural anchorage and the road to Marrakech was a straight line. The town walls around the old section of the city are about 3 km (2 miles) long.
Fun fact. Purple has long been a color associated with royalty. Around the 1st century BC, the Berber King Juba II established a Tyrian purple factory, processing the murex and purpura shells found in the intertidal rocks at Essaouira and the islands off shore. This dye was used by royals for their robes and colored the purple stripe in the togas worn by the senators of Imperial Rome.
We started out by walking outside of the walled area of town and visiting the harbor. Today the port is used almost exclusively for fishing. There was a fleet of medium sized fishing boats, and a large number of small boats used primarily for sardine fishing. There were many fishermen selling a variety of types of fish. The harbor was a beehive of activity with fishermen, ship repair, and other construction activity going on.
These lockers are for the motors and equipment for the the small blue fishing boats.
The gate from the harbor is supposed to symbolize tolerance, with symbols from Christianity, Islam and Judaism. At one point after the founding of modern Essaouira almost half the population was Jewish traders, but today the Jewish population is almost zero.
After leaving the harbor we walked along the Atlantic side of the town. It was low tide so there were a bunch of exposed tide pools.
We then came to the fortress.
Essaouira has a number of markets, and lots of shops.
We have eaten A LOT of bread on this trip. Every meal has a basket of bread to get started and they refill it as required. Some days it feels like I have eaten this much bread.
Until Essaouira, we have been very disappointed in the quality of Moroccan pizza . There are lots of pizza places, but they all produce very bland pizza. We finally found a good place today. Karen had a pizza and I had a calzone that I think must have been stuffed with a couple of pounds of cheese, mushrooms, artichokes,, and ham. We both gave the food a thumbs up.
After our late lunch we went back to the hotel. Karen took a nap and I worked on the blog. We then went to the beach later. The sandy beach is beautiful, but Essaouira is known as the windy city and as a result it is rarely a pleasant place to sit or lay on the beach, or to swim. This had helped to keep Essaouira from being overdeveloped with lots of foreign tourists. It is a popular spot with kite surfers and wind surfers.
They also offer rides on the beach - your choice of horse or camel. There is also a nice wide promenade running between the road and the beach.
We stayed at the beach to watch the sunset, then got crepes to eat and returned to the hotel.
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