Travel– The Call of Tangier – With new hotels, museums, and travel routes, Tangier is welcoming visitors to a city whose cultural scene is shaped by locals.

With new hotels, museums, and travel routes, Tangier is welcoming visitors to a city whose cultural scene is shaped by locals.

- By Rima Suqi

If you had said to me 10 years ago that Tangier was going to be the hottest place and everybody was going to be talking about it, I would have said you were crazy," admits Kenza Bennani, founder of ready-to-wear and accessories brand New Tangier. Her hometown is one of the largest cities in Morocco, perched on the northwestern tip of not just the country but the entire African continent. It's an extraordinary location, poised between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, and bordered by the Strait of Gibraltar. The hillside topography here is often compared with San Francisco's, and on a clear day residents say they can see cars zipping along the southern Spanish coast, just across the way.

A courtyard at the art museum Dar Niaba.

Unlike Marrakech or Casablanca, Tangier hasn't seen a boom in huge new resorts and luxury boutiques or become overly popular. It's managed to retain its charm and an air of mystery, possibly because until recently, it's been relatively difficult to travel to. That's undoubtedly one reason that it has drawn so many creative types over the years, from Henri Matisse (who called it "a painter's paradise") to authors Paul Bowles and Jean Genet, and designer Yves Saint Laurent and his partner Pierre Bergé.

A showroom for the fashion brand New Tangier.