Sur les terres oubliées des Petites Iles de la Sonde
Sur les terres oubliées des Petites Iles de la Sonde
MARRAKECH
Marrakech
By the numbers. The doors are twelve, like the months of the year. The protective saints are seven. The colors that explain life are also seven ... We must not pass in front of these ornate openings, which are like the eyes of the city, we must borrow them: this is their mission. It's your role. Enter Marrakech as many times as you want.
Also take the time to go around it on foot to better appreciate it in all its aspects: it is a 17-kilometer ride that seems all the shorter as it has the traveling shots and that it is astounding in the proper sense of the term.
It is a memorable experience.
We can do the same test in Fez, but the historic capital of the North lines a bowl and we dominate it by road. Impossible in Marrakech which is gradually revealed and that its large gardens are so airy that we forget the metropolis. Djemaa el-Fna, the heart of the city, policed but intact, makes these twelve doors forget and makes them incidental. It is therefore necessary to give them all their meaning… before doing like all Moroccans for a thousand years: entering the mythical place!
The ramparts of Marrakech and the High Atlas mountains.
The minaret of Koutoubia, literally the mosque of booksellers, because it has up to 200 book merchant shops, is the masterpiece of Almohad art that best symbolizes the power of the capital: 67.50 m high, 12.50 m side. The purest and most complete jewel of Andalusian-Moroccan art. His signature.
A wall of the Badi Palace and its emblematic stork. Built at the end of the 16th century, by the Saadian sultan Ahmed El Mansour ad Dahbi, in other words "the victorious and the covered with gold", it suffered from having been dismantled to decorate other palaces, but it found its superb. It is now the scene of a renowned international festival.
The Mouassine mosque built in 1563 by the Saadian sultan Abdellah el Ghalib, is a treasure whose essentials are invisible to non-believers, its minbar (pulpit for the preacher) in marquetry, the basins and their porticoes are exceptional. There remains the El Mouassine fountain, side by side, visible to all, of a size and a unique look in Morocco.
On a riad terrace, a young woman dries her hair
Bab Aguenaou, one of the mythical gates of the red city - but not always: the original stone, extracted in the nearby Guéliz, was bluish and it is the ocher dust that colors it. Oldest door of the Almohad dynasty, it gave access to the imperial palace.
Marrakech, Majorelle Garden.
This blue was invented by the painter Jacques Majorelle who came to spend a few weeks in Morocco for health reasons and who will stay there 35 years.
A cult place that has attracted big names in art and entertainment. A reference.
