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Fabled Tangier

A renaissance is under way in Tangier, Morocco's famously shabby port city. Some hope the sprucing up won’t go too far.

By Christopher Bagley
Photographed by Ben Hoffmann
November 2007

Plenty of places have been mythologized over the years as glamorous bastions of ill repute, but Tangier in the Forties and Fifties was one of the few that actually lived up to its bad name. Part of an international zone on the North African coast that was officially ruled by nine nations, the city was effectively governed by none of them—so its habitues could get away with things they’d never attempt back home. Spies and arms dealers gathered in seedy cafes; aging Englishmen entertained offers from Arab boys; American heiress Barbara Hutton hosted drug-fueled parties at her house in the casbah. But after the city was incorporated into Morocco in 1956, the expats started to drift away, taking much of the excitement with them, and Tangier became known as a shabby port town, a place you hurried through on your way to Fez or Ouarzazate.

Now, however, the city is on the upswing again, luring a new crowd of in-the-know Europeans as well as a massive influx of government spending, courtesy of Morocco’s young king, Mohammed VI (his conservative father, Hassan II, hated Tangier for its decadent reputation and neglected it for decades). And although the talk among expats these days is more likely to be about scoring good hydrangeas than good hashish, the town still retains much of its gritty, idiosyncratic appeal. Longtime locals are hopeful that Tangier will never be like Morocco’s reigning tourist mecca, Marrakesh, which has lately begun to suffer from its own success, as foreign buyers transform every available corner of the souk into neo-Moorish boutique hotels and British partiers arrive en masse via low-cost fares from London. For many Europeans, Tangier is an ideal under-the-radar alternative, straddling the line between boom town and ghost town.

“Tangier is one of those cities you either love or despise. I, of course, love it,” says Paris social doyenne Betty Lagardère, who has been renting a summer place here for several years and recently decided to buy. Seated in the back of her chauffeur-driven SUV and dressed in a custom linen djellaba, Lagardère explains that she was drawn to Tangier by the same North African light that captivated Matisse and the same cross-cultural mix that drew composer and writer Paul Bowles, who lived here from 1947 until his death in 1999. “It’s such a mysterious place,” she says. “To understand it, you have to look behind its doors.”

Indeed, Tangier’s charms might not be instantly obvious to first-time visitors: Touring its main public areas, which the city is feverishly renovating in a bid to host the 2012 International Exposition, is a bit like meeting an octogenarian who’s just had her first facelift. But the changes completed in the past year alone have made a dramatic difference. “See those gardens? New,” says Lagardère as we speed past a freshly planted town square. “That fountain? New. A year ago this street was covered in garbage.”

Since that was written in 2007 Tangier is a city I would love to visit.

Tangier
September 24, 2012

Welcome to Tangier, Morocco. From Tarifa, Spain, it’s only a 35-minute “fast ferry” ride across the straight of Gibraltar.

Morocco–as with many places in Europe and the Near East which had contact with the Greeks and Romans in early times, and the Moors, Spanish, French, and English in later times–has had an interesting history of religion, change, and control.

There are Roman ruins at the city of Volubilis (115 miles south of Tangier) which harken back to the time when Rome controlled all shores of the Mediterranean. Before that, just outside of the city of Tangier was a Phoenician colony at one of two potential sites for the ancient Pillars of Hercules. In more recent times (19th and 20th centuries), Morocco went through an interesting era as an “international city” where its ownership was shared between multiple countries and it was designated a tax-free zone. This, as you can imagine, attracted everyone from thrifty billionaires to con-men, and caused the Moroccan government to leave Tangier by the wayside. Times have now changed for the better, and in 1956, Tangier was returned to full Moroccan control. The Moroccan government is now investing in Tangier again, trying to bring back the “world-class” city status it once had (minus the con-men).

Here you will find the strange mix of church, mosque, and synagogue that you might expect to find in Jerusalem. The mosque and church histories are not that hard to fit in, given the Moorish and European influence, but the synagogue is a tougher fit. As is the case with many pockets of scattered Jewish populations, Morocco at times opened up to receive Jews. Some even came to the area in Rome times. These patterns solidified a Jewish presence here, which has declined in modern times. This helps explain the occasional Star of David you see in Tangier, as on stair rails from a popular Jewish hotel in the 50s near the port in Tangier.

Unfortunately, we cannot show pictures from the archeological museum, because, as with some museums, they do not allow photos. This is a pity for this museum in particular, since they do not sell books, nor do they have a website. Allowing responsible photography, as many museums have found, is a great way to promote themselves.

Last but most important, petting baby camels. They appear to have a sweet spot, just under the chin. Once you find it, you appear to have control of them. Who would have thought a camel could be so adorable?