Assilah
The gorgeous whitewashed resort town of Assilah feels like somewhere on a Greek island, but
the tapas and paella on the Spanish menus in the restaurants and the wrought-iron windows on
the white houses are but a few reminders that the town was Spanish territory for a long time.
Assilah is an easy and hassle-free introduction to Morocco and, with a good selection of budget
hotels and restaurants, and a burgeoning art scene, the town has become a favourite stop on
the traveller’s trail of the North Atlantic coast.
The town’s mayor lives in the picturesque medina and has vowed to make it as clean as
Switzerland. The old medina has been seriously gentrified in the last few years as more and
more houses have been bought by affluent Moroccans and Europeans, mainly Spanish. The
town is sleepy for most of the year, but in the summer months the population grows from
12,000 to 110,000, when Moroccan families descend here, as elsewhere along the coast. The
small town is then completely overrun, the beaches are packed and the touts come out in force.
The best time to visit is in spring or autumn when the weather is still pleasant but the crowds
are gone.
Assilah has had a turbulent history as a small, but strategic port since it began life as the
Carthaginian settlement of Zilis. During the Punic Wars the people backed Carthage, and when
the region fell to the Romans, the locals were shipped to Spain and replaced with Iberians.
From then on, Assilah was inexorably linked with the Spanish and with their numerous battles
for territory.