Journal

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Morocco marks its year with moussems, harvests and horses. Tbourida and the cherry festival at Sefrou are both inscribed by UNESCO in their own right.

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.

Spring and autumn are the comfortable seasons, but Morocco is really three climates at once, and the one you are packing for decides when to go.

A fortified earthen village on the road from the Sahara to Marrakesh, inscribed in 1987. Its communal buildings include a caravanserai and two cemeteries.

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.