3 Days in Tangier

Begin on the Petit Socco, the small square locals call the zoco chico. Before the International Zone, the British, Spanish, German and French post offices stood on its four sides, and the State Bank of Morocco kept its head office here from 1907 to 1952. The square slid downhill after the 1950s, and this cafe on its northern side is the one that stayed.

Order a mint tea or a coffee and a piece of msemen, the flaky flatbread, and watch the lanes empty into the square. It's touristy and the prices show it, but it's a good place to get your bearings. A small museum, Dar Niaba (Musée des artistes voyageurs), sits off Rue Siaghine; hours aren't confirmed, so check at the door.

From the square, walk the lanes toward the Great Mosque, in its current form from the early 19th century, on a site that has held a Roman temple, a church and, under the Portuguese, a cathedral. Its minaret rises over the rooftops, and it's an exterior sight. Tangier's medina is compact compared with Fes or Marrakech, but it's still easy to lose your bearings. If you do, go uphill to the Grand Socco and the new town, or downhill to the port.

A polite la, shukran (no, thank you) and a steady walk are enough for shopkeepers and guides. Go in the morning; the lanes get busy in the evening.

A short walk from the Petit Socco is the only National Historic Landmark the United States owns abroad, run today as the American Legation museum. Morocco recognized American independence in December 1777, the first country to do so, and signed a treaty of friendship in 1786. In 1821 Sultan Moulay Suliman gave the building to the United States, which used it as a diplomatic post for about 140 years. A society formed in 1976 to save it, and it's now a museum.

Inside are old maps, prints, works by the painter Marguerite McBey and the Paul Bowles Wing, three rooms set up in 2010 for the writer who lived in Tangier from 1947 until his death in 1999. It's small and quiet.

Stay in the lanes for lunch. A modest family place on Rue des Postes, Ahlen, was listed in 2022 for a tagine or couscous with bread, olives, cheese and tea for 50-90 MAD, which is typical: simple Moroccan food, a few tables, a daily choice. Main dishes in the medina run from about 40 to 150 MAD.

Look for a short menu with prices on it. Vegetarian tagines are common, but may be cooked with lamb stock, so ask.

The Kasbah is the fortified northwest corner of the medina. Its palace, Dar el Makhzen, was built in the early 18th century under Sultan Moulay Ismail by the governor Pasha Ahmad ben Ali al-Rifi, on the ruins of the English fort. It housed governors and visiting sultans, and in 1922 the French scholar Édouard Michaux-Bellaire began turning it into a museum. It reopened in 2016 after a renovation as the Kasbah Museum of Mediterranean Cultures.

The rooms hold Moroccan art, carpets, Fez silks and manuscripts, and the old kitchen shows Roman finds from Lixus and Volubilis. The north terrace looks over the port to the Spanish coast. A contemporary art space opened in the former prison in late 2021. The tomb said to be Ibn Battuta's, the traveler born in Tangier in 1304, is a short walk away; it's a purported tomb, so expect no proof.

Walk down from the Kasbah to the harbor, past the passenger port where the Tarifa ferries dock. Cargo moved out to Tanger Med, and the old port was converted for ferries and pleasure boats. The marina has a boardwalk of cafes and restaurants, and Avenue Mohammed VI runs along the bay.

This is the modern, outward-facing Tangier, best at dusk when the lights come on (sunset is around 17:15 in winter). Reports call parts of the corniche worn, so go for the walk and the view.

Boats land their catch at the port every day, and the small local seafood places on the docks, behind the warehouses, serve it on a tray. Order a mix of shrimp, calamari and fish with a big salad. There's usually no printed menu, which is when you ask the price first; about 60 MAD was once typical for a plate two could share.

The restaurants along Avenue Mohammed VI also do fish. Whatever you pick, agree the price before you sit.

The Grand Socco is the big square outside the medina, officially the Place du 9 Avril 1947, named after the speech Sultan Mohammed V gave in Tangier that day. Socco is a Spanish bending of the Arabic souk. On Thursday and Sunday mornings, women from the Rif mountains reportedly still sell produce and dairy along the wall of St Andrew's Church, the Anglican church built in Moorish style with a belltower shaped like a minaret.

Beside the square are the Sidi Bou Abid Mosque, tiled in 1917, the Mendoubia Gardens and the Cinema Rif. The Gran Teatro Cervantes, a Spanish theater from 1913, has long stood shut and falling apart; photograph it from the gates.

The cafes around the square serve coffee with milk, orange juice and warm bread. A cafe where locals sit charges about half what a tourist cafe asks, and a bread seller often passes with cheese and honey.

Walk up to Boulevard Pasteur, the spine of the Ville Nouvelle, the new city with the banks, shops and cafes. It's not a sight in itself. At the end, the Terrasse des Paresseux, the Terrace of the Idlers, looks out over the bay and the beach, a place to sit and watch the port.

The Hotel El Minzah is just off the main road, a reminder of the International Zone years.

Walk down to the city beach, the long arc of sand along Avenue Mohammed VI, with cafes and restaurants on the promenade above and a view back to the medina. In summer it fills with families; in winter it belongs to walkers, and swimming is a June-to-September idea.

Many seafront bars serve tapas. Have lunch here before you head west.

Fourteen kilometers west of the city, the caves are a limestone cavern with two openings, one to the land and one to the sea. Seen from inside, the sea opening is shaped like a map of Africa. The legend says Hercules rested here before fetching the golden apples.

What's real: people lived here around 6000 BC, and Berber craftsmen cut millstones from the walls, which enlarged the cave. It opened to visitors in 1920, a rockfall closed it in December 2003 (it reopened a month later), and a renovation reopened it in October 2015. It's busy and a little commercial, but short. You don't need an extra guide.

Cape Spartel is the northwestern tip of the African continent, where the road ends at a lighthouse built by Sultan Muhammad IV in 1864 on the cliff of Jebel Quebir. The cape is where the Atlantic is said to meet the Mediterranean: the lighthouse's longitude is recognized as the western limit of the Mediterranean, though there's no line in the water. The point is the horizon, the strait on one side and the open ocean on the other.

It's windy and exposed. You can also climb the lighthouse for views, but opening times aren't confirmed, so ask on site.

On the way back, finish at the cafe every Tangier story ends up in. Café Hafa opened in 1921 on a cliff over the bay, its terraces stepping down toward the strait, with Tarifa visible on a clear day. Paul Bowles, William Burroughs, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones all sat here, and it still keeps its original decor.

Bowles settled in Tangier in 1947, and The Sheltering Sky came out in 1949. Burroughs followed in the mid-1950s; the manuscript he called Interzone became the basis of Naked Lunch (Paris, 1959). Order a mint tea (15 MAD on a recent visit, up from 10-12), take a terrace seat and watch the ferries. It's crowded at sunset and service is slow.

Asilah is a small fortified town of about 31,000 people, and its walls are intact. The Almohads built the first ones, and the Portuguese, who held the town from 1471 until 1549, rebuilt most of what you see. Spain held it from 1589 until Moulay Ismail's army took it in 1692, and it was part of Spanish Morocco from 1912 to 1956. Enter through Bab Al Kasbah, one of the two main gates.

The medina is small, clean and car-free, so you can wander without a plan. The Raisuli Palace, the Grand Mosque built under Moulay Ismail and the Kahal Synagogue are inside the walls.

What makes Asilah different is the paint. In 1978 the mayor, Mohamed Benaissa, began restoring the old town and, with the painter Mohamed Melehi, co-founded the International Cultural Moussem, held every August. Artists paint new murals on the medina's whitewashed walls each year, so what you see depends on the year.

Walk without a map and look at doors, corners and small squares. Some murals are abstract, some figurative, some faded. Ask before photographing people at their doors.

Climb to the ramparts and walk the sea wall. The Portuguese bastions face the Atlantic, with waves breaking on the rocks below, and the sea gate, Bab el Bahr, opens straight onto the water.

This is the best photograph of Asilah. The wind can be strong in winter.

Seafood restaurants line Avenue Mohamed el Hassani, with covered terraces beside the medina's southeast wall. Menus mix Spanish classics such as paella and tortilla with tagine and couscous, and the fish is the draw. Choose a grilled fish or a seafood plate and eat outside if the weather allows. It's Friday, so a couscous with vegetables and meat is the traditional midday meal.

Ask which restaurants serve beer or wine, since not all do.

There are beaches on both sides of the town, and the nearest is a short walk from the medina walls. The sand is wide and open to the Atlantic, with surf and a steady wind, so in winter it's for walking, not swimming. In summer it fills with Moroccan families.

Leave time for the walk and the taxi back to the station, and check the last train to Tangier before you settle in.