The word Essaouira means image. Observed from any angle, Essaouira is a perfect photograph. Behind its purple ramparts and inside its whitewashed medina with blue doors lies a city that has been influenced by various cultures (Berber, Carthaginian, Portuguese, English, Bambara and others). It was the Jewish traders that once formed the majority of the population and it was they who transformed Essaouira into what became Morocco's most prosperous city in the 17th and 18th centuries....

Marrakesh or Marrakech, known as the "Red City", is the capital of the mid-southwestern Moroccan economic region of Marrakech-Tensift-Al Haouz, near the foothills of the Atlas Mountains....