Travel to Essaouira, Morocco

Essaouira is one of the oldest cities in Morocco. It was built by Portuguese people during their colonization in Morocco. It’s a small wonderful city in the Atlantic Ocean coast, exactly 170 KM in the north of Agadir. I must advise you to bring some winter clothes when visiting Essaouira even in the summer, because it’s a windy cold city, especially during the night.

Food and drinks

Essaouira is one of the most tourist cities in Morocco and therefore it has so many restaurants, especially for fish lovers, where you can enjoy traditional meals from Essaouira with a price around 5 to 10 euros. You find also so many cafés in the borders of Essaouira beach, where you can take your coffee and enjoy the sunset from there.

Transport

You don’t need to use transport in this small city, believe me, you will enjoy walking there, especially in the old Medina of Essaouira. But if you really need transport, there are taxis in Essaouira (no metro, no buses and also no Uber). But there are too many so you can find one easily.

Accommodation

Essaouira is so touristic, so you will not have any problem to find a hotel or house to stay, because there are so many. Good hotels in this city are available in booking website and hotels applications. The price is around 60 euros to 90 euros per person per night in 4 stars hotels and between 90 euros and 200 euros per night per person in 5 stars hotel. But in hotels from 1 to 3 stars (as students usually prefer), the price is around 20 to 40 euros per night per person. If you are travelling in a group the best idea is to find some people who can rent you an apartment or a house because the price is around 40 to 60 euros for all of you. The price of these houses depends on how big it is and how long is its distance from the beach and the old Medina of Essaouira.

Essaouira Gnaua y World Music Festival

Gnaua Festival is a festival of music where arts and culture meet. It's a colourful party in the beautiful streets of Essaouira old Medina. Gnaoua is a kind of music originary from the north of Africa (Morocco, Senegal, Mauritania, etc. ). During these festival days (from 20 to 23 June) every year, all the streets, public places area and theatres are dancing to the rhythm of Gnaoua music.

Most important places

The most important part to visit in Essaouira is the old part called old Medina of Essaouira. There you will feel that you are in a historical environment, walking in small alleyways built by in the colonization time. You will find also a lot of shops selling traditional foods from this part of Morocco, and also so many and varied traditional crafts (shoes, clothes, rugs named "alzilal", jewellery... )

Traditional rugs named "alzilal" sellers

Shops of traditional jewellery

Shops of traditional shoes and clothes

Shops of souvenirs from Essaouira

In the old Medina are also some places that you must visit, because they are like a landmark in the history of this city, and the old Medina has also museums and galleries having some old beautiful things from the old time that you can buy ( but the price is very high, some of them are around 200 euros and more), but they can sell you cheap souvenirs from Essaouira.

Shop of masks and sculptures

The old part of Essaouira must be visited, but other important places are:

Essaouira fishing port

It's a traditional old fishing port, there you can buy so many kinds of fish and sea fruit with a good price. Then you can ask some small restaurant there to fry it for you. The price to fry is one euro per kilogram of fish. You will also enjoy seeing the beauty of the colourful traditional boats as you see in the picture below. In this place are also some traditional boat builders, so you will feel like you are inside an old factory of boats.

Essaouira old fishing port

Near to the fishing port, in the middle of a small island, there is an old prison, used in the past by the army (its idea was, even if the prisoners went out of the prison, they could not escape because the island is surrounded by water and far from the city).

Picture of the old prison

La Kasbah Gallery

This gallery is amazing. The first thing I loved was its architecture (as old typical houses of Morocco it has a hole in the middle of it to stay all the day sunny). This museum has so much traditional and old stuff (dishes, decoration, paintings, sculptures, doors, rugs and more). Some of these things are so old, from the 18th century and that's the reason why their prices are so high (sometimes it can cost around 1, 000 euros). You can buy also normal souvenir there with a good price.

Essaouira wall

Almost all tourists visit this place because it’s important in the history of Essaouira and Morocco. It’s an old wall in the borders of the city, built by Portuguese to protect the city from their enemies' attacks. So there still exist many old cannons. The view from this place is amazing, you can see a part of Essaouira from there as it is shown in the pictures below.

Dar Souiri

It's an important house because they said that it’s the oldest house in the city. The name (Souiri) means (the man from Essaouira) and it's the family name of the owner of this house.

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