Heritage & Culture

Founded from Tyre and inscribed in 1979, Carthage was the metropolis of Punic civilization in Africa before Rome rebuilt it as a capital.

The only known Punic city in the Mediterranean that Rome never built over. Abandoned in the third century BC and never reinhabited since.

Probably the first capital of the Numidian kingdom, and called by UNESCO the best preserved Africo-Roman town in North Africa.

Founded in 670 AD, the oldest Arabo-Muslim base in the Maghreb and capital of Ifriqiya for five centuries. Its Great Mosque became the model.

Founded in 698 AD and inscribed in 1979, some 700 historic monuments across 280 hectares, and a city that was once among the richest in the Arab world.

UNESCO records Gnawa as beginning with people taken in the slave trade. Morocco is where the Sahara met the Atlantic, and its heritage list says so plainly.

A tagine is the pot, not the dish. Moroccan cooking runs on slow braises, bread used as a utensil, and mint tea that arrives whether you asked for it or not.

Morocco is Amazigh and Arab, and both languages are official. Knowing which greeting, which hand and which moment to photograph is most of what a visitor needs.

Founded between 789 and 808 and inscribed in 1981, the Medina of Fez is a working city of some hundred thousand people, not an open air museum.

A 42 hectare Roman town on the edge of the empire, inscribed in 1997, that was an Amazigh capital first and an Idrisid one last.

A fortified Atlantic port laid out on a European military plan in the 1760s, inscribed in 2001, and called by UNESCO the Port of Timbuktu.

Founded in 1070 and inscribed in 1985, Marrakesh gave the country its name. Its medina covers 700 hectares and its square is inscribed in its own right.