When the great actor and director Orson Welles needed an atmospheric and visually dramatic place to film his acclaimed version of “Othello,” he knew just where to point his camera.
Here.
In Essaouira, with its cannon-lined ramparts, brooding watchtowers, narrow cobblestoned streets, boat-filled harbor, and sweeping ocean and shoreline views, Welles found a setting worthy of Shakespeare and his own artistic vision. The old walled town has changed little since Welles worked here four decades ago, and not all that much in the last two centuries, for that matter.
A visitor today walks the same massive walls and climbs up to the identical towers and bastions where the distraught Othello (played by Welles in over-the-top form), suspecting his wife Desdemona to be unfaithful, roamed and ranted in jealous rage.
These days most Essaouira roamers are low-key tourist couples, often hand-holding honeymooners attracted by Essaouira’s magnificent 6-mile-long crescent beach and romantic reputation.
It’s also possible to have a drink in sidewalk cafes and enjoy seafood meals at harborside restaurants that, over the several years it took to make the film, were enthusiastically patronized by Welles: a man whose appetite and girth were as awesome as his talents.
Essaouira fondly remembers Welles — along with the international attention and celebrity influx his “Othello” brought the town — and has even named a square after him.
Different in appearance and ambience from any other town in Morocco, Essaouira is very much its own place. Strategically located halfway down Morocco’s Atlantic coast, it was founded by the Portuguese at the end of the 14th Century as a trading port called Mogador.
The Portuguese were eventually driven out, and in 1765 the then sultan of Morocco, Sidi Mohammed bin Abdallah, hired a French architect to design a fortified port on the site. The Western-style town, renamed Essaouira, was meant to both protect and contain the foreign traders who were Morocco’s commercial link with the outside world, but also as a potential bridgehead for European invaders.
Which explains why, although Essaouira is only a few hours’ drive from Marrakech, probably the most Moroccan of cities, it has a relaxed, cosmopolitan and almost southern European feel. Instead of the labyrinthine street plan common to most Moroccan towns, here the streets run straight as arrows and meet at precise right angles. And along with the expected large mosque there is also an active Christian church where, since Essaouira is an international resort, services are held alternately in French, English, Dutch and German.
Until about 20 years ago a majority of the town’s population were Jews, but most of Morocco’s Jewish community has emigrated to Israel or France in recent years. Essaouira still has a small so-called “mellah,” or Jewish quarter, but many of the houses and shops in it have been abandoned, the synagogues closed, and it now has a rather forlorn air.
In contrast to the intimidating fortifications surrounding it, Essaouira itself is a light-filled and welcoming place. Virtually all the buildings within the old town are painted white and blue, the cheerful local signature color scheme, and there are sun-filled and cafe-lined small squares that invite lingering.
As everywhere in Morocco, shopping streets and markets in Essaouira are lively places, but they are nowhere near as frenetic or confusing as, say, the large and maze-like souks of Marrakech or Fez. Also happily absent are the aggressively friendly would-be guides and the persistent souvenir salesmen who so often bedevil tourists in Morocco.
Essaouira is one of the crafts centers of Morocco and noted for its jewelry and woodworking, particularly exquisite inlaid work, or marquetry, from the fragrant local thuya wood. Many woodworking shops — aromatic places perfumed with thuya dust — are located in the old gunpowder magazines beneath the Skala de la Ville, the main bastion that faces the sea and is lined with a baker’s dozen of 18th and 19th Century cannons.
The artisans work from early morning to well into the evening and usually welcome visitors. Customers are advised not to waste time trying to haggle: The thuya craftsmen know the value of their work, and prices, already low by American standards, are usually non-negotiable.
To many people, Moroccan cuisine is lamb couscous and not much else except possibly chicken couscous. In Essaouira, however, eating out mostly means seafood — the best and freshest in Morocco, it is claimed.
The seafood places are all clustered around the harbor, very much a working fishing port, and share space on the quays with small shipyards where wooden boats are still made by hand to a design Sinbad the Sailor would have recognized. Dining options range from simple stalls, where fresh-caught fish is cooked in front of you on charcoal grills and eaten al fresco at wharfside picnic tables, to full-service sit-down restaurants such as Le Coquillage and Chez Sam.
A local institution, Chez Sam is famous all over Morocco. For about $15 a head, Sam, an imposing white-haired man in skullcap and flowing djelaba, serves an enormous set meal that could satiate an Orson Welles. A tableful of plates of delicious Moroccan hors d’oeuvres is followed by grilled lobster tail, fish soup, octopus salad, baked sea bass, and on and on to an almond-covered pastry and high-octane espresso for dessert. Essaouira has a wide range of places to stay, from campgrounds and hostels to beachside resort hotels. In a class by themselves, however, are the Hotel Villa Maroc and the Hotel Riad al Medina. Within the walls of the old town, both are beautifully restored mansions and charmingly and unfussily elegant. Double rooms at the Villa Maroc, which occupies two adjoining 18th Century houses, start at $60. Rates at the Riad al Medina, a former pasha’s villa, begin at $50.
