Essaouira · The City Where the Wind Never Stops

Essaouira’s ramparts are built straight onto the sea, with gun batteries facing the Atlantic; inside are blue-and-white houses and rows of fishing boats, and the wind blows from morning to night and hardly ever stops.

It used to be a port where pirates and merchant ships both called, and a place where Europeans, Berbers and Jewish traders lived side by side. The old lanes still hold each family’s door plates and courtyards, most of them workshops now — chessboards and table tops cut from local thuya wood.

Locals say the wind does not belong to the city; it belongs to the sea. The city just happens to stand on the way it passes.

Historical Mysteries / Essaouira · Morocco / 1764