In Marrakech, craft is not exhibited: it is performed. On Jemaa el-Fna square every evening, and in a hundred souks every day, the artisan gesture blends with the theatrical gesture.

Marrakech was founded in 1070 by Youssef ibn Tachfin, an Almoravid chief come from the Sahara, at a strategic crossroads between the trans-Saharan caravans and the Atlas routes. The town became the capital of an empire that stretched to Senegal and Andalusia. It is, under the Almohads then the Saadians and the Alawites, the great meeting point of the urban crafts of the North and the Berber traditions of the High Atlas and the Souss. This double matrix makes its singularity: a town where Fassi zellige and Beni Ouarain carpets, urban brassware and Amazigh jewellery coexist.

I. The square that inspired the world

In May 2001, Jemaa el-Fna square was proclaimed by UNESCO a "masterpiece of the oral and intangible heritage of humanity" — one of the nineteen masterpieces of the first proclamation. It was this recognition that led, two years later, to the adoption of the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (2003). In other words: it was the Marrakchi experience of the halqa — the circle of spectators around a storyteller, a Gnawa musician, an acrobat, a snake charmer — that pushed the international community to create a legal framework for these living heritages. The square is therefore, literally, the matrix of the international law of intangible heritage.

Each evening the halqa resumes: hlayqis (storytellers in Darija and Tachelhit) come from the Souss, Gnawa troupes originating from historic Mali, Chleuh musicians, monkey trainers, herbalists, public scribes, itinerant dentists, henna sellers. The ritual begins around 4 pm with the schoolchildren coming out, rises in intensity at sunset, and culminates around 10 pm under the bare bulbs of the food stalls.

II. Tadelakt, the plaster that breathes

Tadelakt is, par excellence, the gesture of Marrakech. This decorative plaster based on Marrakchi lime (extracted from the hills near the town), mixed with pigments and smoothed with a pebble stone (an Atlas pebble) then polished with black soap, has been used since the Almohad era for hammams, basins, pools, rooms and stair steps. Its property: to be totally waterproof while remaining breathable — which allows the interior of hammams to be coated without condensation.

The complete process takes between three and seven days: application in several layers, repeated polishing during setting, application of Beldi black soap that saturates the surface and triggers the saponification of the limestone. The colour springs directly from the pigment added to the lime: red ochre of the Marrakech earths, copper-oxide green, cobalt blue, saffron yellow. No Moroccan town masters this technique better. The great guest houses and contemporary riads have made tadelakt the signature element of the Marrakchi renovation.

III. Medersa Ben Youssef and the Saadian heritage

Built around 1564 under the Saadian sultan Abdellah el-Ghalib, the Ben Youssef medersa was the largest Quranic school of the Maghreb: up to 900 students lodged there simultaneously, in 130 monastic cells arranged around a central patio covered in zellige, floral-motif carved stucco and finely chiselled Middle-Atlas cedar wood.

Reopened in April 2022 after several years of restoration directed by the Ministry of Culture and the Moroccan Tourism Investment Fund, the medersa illustrates the meeting between Fassi zellige stereotomy and the Andalusian sensibility imported by the Saadians — descendants of a Tafilalet family returned from Timbuktu via the Souss, and great renovators of Moroccan architectural aesthetics.

IV. Berber jewellery, capital of the south

Marrakech is the great market of the Berber jewellery of the Moroccan south. The tizerzaï fibulae, the amber-coral-silver necklaces, the taounza diadems, the tigharatin earrings come from the crafts of the Souss, the Anti-Atlas, the Sahara — and pass through the silversmith souks of the medina. The Mellah quarter, once inhabited by the Moroccan Jewish community (a strong community of jewellers until the 1960s), remains a high place of filigreed and nielloed silverwork.

The carpet circulates too: the Marrakech carpet craft cooperative gathers productions come from the High Atlas (Aït Ouaouzguite, Ouaouizaght), the Middle Atlas (Beni Mguild, Marmoucha), and the Plateau of the Lakes. The Berber and Lebbadine souks are the largest carpet-selling places in the kingdom. Every Tuesday the carpet auction is held — where the sensaals (middlemen) cry out the prices before the buyers gathered in a circle.

V. To see, to learn

Essential places to understand the crafts of Marrakech.

• Jemaa el-Fna Square Heart of the medina — UNESCO 2001/2008. A living theatre every evening.
• Medersa Ben Youssef Bab Doukkala — Saadian Quranic school (1564), restored 2022.
• Souks of the medina North of Jemaa el-Fna — 18 souks specialised by guild.
• House of Photography Souk Lebbadine — Photographic heritage 1879-1960, permanent exhibition.
• Bahia Palace Mellah quarter — A masterpiece of zouak, stucco and zellige, late 19th c.
• Yves Saint Laurent Museum / Majorelle Garden Gueliz quarter — Berber Museum, reference collection of Amazigh jewellery.

VI. Sources

1. UNESCO ICH — Cultural space of Jemaa el-Fna square — Inscription 2008 (proclaimed 2001). — link.
2. UNESCO WHC — Medina of Marrakech — World Heritage 1985. — link.
3. National Foundation of Museums — Medersa Ben Youssef — Restoration and reopening, April 2022..
4. Maison de l'Artisan — Marrakech-Safi — Regional mapping of the trades. — link.