Into Africa

To visit Morocco is still like turning the pages of some illuminated Persian manuscript all embroidered with bright shapes and subtle lines. – Edith Wharton

Morocco has long been the dim light beckoning across the Strait of Gibraltar from continental Europe, drawing writers, poets, painters and dreamers to its bustling aromatic cities and its vast empty spaces.

It is to where Edith Wharton escaped for an adventurous visit at the end of WWI. No guidebooks; just the tomes of Ibn Buttata to lead the way. It is where Paul Bowles lived for most of his adult life to write such haunting works as The Sheltering Sky, initially prompted to visit the country by his friend, Gertrude Stein, who, herself found inspiration in the North African expanse. More recently, Yves St. Laurent adopted Marrakech as a delectable canvas and made his mark on the local cultural fabric.

BEYOND CASABLANCA And then there are the countless films, so numerous that the country has its own film office and list of standby medinas to set into action. The ancient clay city of the Aït Benhaddou near Ouarzazate is easily recognized as the city of Unsullied in Game of Thrones (also scenes from Gladiator were filmed here). Orson Welles shot Othello in Essaouira. Hitchcock filmed the Man Who Knew Too Much in Marrakech. Parts of Lawrence of Arabia were filmed in Morocco. Ironically, Casablanca was not.

But the travelers to Morocco these days are less apt to be poets and writers, and more likely to be young Instagrammers salivating over the ubiquitous cerulean dwellings amid desert palms, ferrous mountain rises and snowcapped peaks in a swirl of hues that mix well with the local drapey fashions donned for striking selfie shots.