The Medina of Essaouira: an 18th-century planned town, its safeguarding plan and its weak points

Essaouira is the medina where foreigners buy most after Marrakesh, and the only one that can be said to have been designed. It did not grow over centuries: a sultan decided on a port, an engineer drew ramparts, streets and blocks, and merchants of every origin came to fill them. That gives it a regularity the other medinas lack, and weaknesses of its own: sea damp, collapsing houses in the Mellah, and land ownership scattered among the State, the commune, the Habous, the Israelite Alliance and private individuals. This guide describes the town from UNESCO’s assessment and the Committee’s recent decisions, then what an owner should take from them. It belongs to the Cities section.

How was Essaouira founded?

The old name tells the origin: Mogador comes “from the Phoenician word Migdol meaning a ‘small fortress'”, and the site, according to ICOMOS, “was originally a Phoenician trading settlement”; the Portuguese built a fort there in the 16th century, of which a late-18th-century church keeps the memory. The present town is later: “its relatively late foundation in comparison to other medinas of North Africa was the work of the Alaouite Sultan Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdallah (1757-1790) who wished to make this small Atlantic town a royal port and chief Moroccan commercial centre open to the outside world”. He called, according to ICOMOS, on “Nicholas Théodore Cornut, a surveyor specialist” in fortifications, “profoundly influenced by the work of the military engineer Vauban at Saint Malo”. Criterion (iv) holds that the medina “was laid out by a French architect” and “for the most part, it has retained its appearance of a European town”.

The sultan moved the southern trade there: “known for a long time as the Port of Timbuktu, Essaouira became one of the major Atlantic commercial centres between Africa and Europe at the end of the 18th century and during the 19th century”. Jewish merchants, whose community formed a major share of the population, European consuls and Moroccan traders made the town “an example of a multicultural centre as proven by the coexistence, since its foundation, of diverse ethnic groups, such as the Amazighs, Arabs, Africans, and Europeans as well as multiconfessional (Muslim, Christian and Jewish)”.

How is the medina organised?

The property covers 56.7 hectares. UNESCO describes “a fortified town of the mid-eighteenth century, surrounded by a wall influenced by the Vauban model”, “constructed according to the principles of contemporary European military architecture, in a North African context, in perfect harmony with the precepts of Arabo-Muslim architecture and town-planning”. ICOMOS counts among its masterpieces “the Sqalas of the port and of the medina, the Bastion of Bab Marrakech”, and among its buildings the synagogues, one of them 19th-century, and the Portuguese church. Cornut’s layout, in straight streets and regular blocks, can still be read from the kasbah by the port to the merchants’ quarters; the Mellah occupies the north of the enclosure.

Two elements extend beyond the ramparts. The Mogador archipelago, “indissociable from the Medina”, “comprises a large number of cultural and natural sites of Outstanding Universal Value”; it is also a Ramsar site. And the sea itself, which made the town, eats at it: UNESCO notes that “notwithstanding the sea swell and dampness”, the fortifications and fabric “conserve, on the whole, their original configuration”, and the 2023 report lists among the factors affecting the property “major deterioration of the maritime part of the fortifications”.

What is the town built of?

“Founded in the middle of the 18th century, the Medina of Essaouira has for the most part conserved its authenticity as regards the conception and outline as well as the materials (use of local stone called manjour) and construction methods, and this in spite of some inadequate use of modern materials for repair and reconstruction work.” Manjour is a calcareous dune sandstone quarried locally, soft, porous, easy to cut and quick to decay under spray and salt; it needs a lime render that breathes and is renewed, exactly as the raw earth of the ksour needs its own. Cement, being impermeable, traps salt and damp and bursts the stone. Already at inscription in 2001, “a number of delegates expressed … some concerns on the reported alterations that had taken place in the city, where inappropriate materials had been used for modern additions”.

What threatens the medina?

UNESCO acknowledges an integrity “slightly altered, notably due to degradation of buildings in the Mellah district”, while judging that “the degree of loss does not compromise the significance of the property as a whole”. The 2023 state of conservation report lists the factors: “progressive deterioration of the built area, continuous collapse of buildings, major deterioration of the maritime part of the fortifications of the Medina”. Decision 47 COM 7B.177 of July 2025 goes further: the Committee notes “with concern the critical state of degradation of the Mellah Quarter, which constitutes an important part of the historical and cultural identity of the Medina”, and asks the State “to make progress in resolving the legal issues related to the ownership of the Mellah properties and to establish, while interacting closely with stakeholders, a strategy for the rehabilitation of the quarter”.

The cause is as much about ownership as about materials. UNESCO notes that “ownership of the elements that make up the historic town of Essaouira is divided between the State, the municipality, the Habous, the Israelite Alliance, cooperatives and private individuals”; in the Mellah, houses whose owners emigrated half a century ago, or which belong to community institutions, can be neither sold nor restored until their status is settled. The Committee also asked for “the traffic study to regulate traffic and manage parking around the port” and “a proposal for a boundary clarification of the property”.

What is the protection regime, and what does it mean for an owner?

The texts: “protection measures essentially relate to the different laws for listing of historic monuments and sites, and particularly the Law 22-80 concerning the Moroccan heritage”. The oldest tool is a planning one: “the 1988 urban plan No. 4001 provides for a buffer zone around the historic town within which construction is prohibited”. The actor: “the Essaouira Urban Agency was created to ensure a better control of town development in general and the medina in particular”. The plans: the 2023 report states that “a master plan for urban development in Greater Essaouira (SDAU) has been adopted” and that “in 2021, a plan to enhance and safeguard the medina of Essaouira (PASME) was approved by decree”, which makes Essaouira, as far as we know, the first Moroccan medina with a safeguarding plan carrying regulatory force.

The World Heritage Committee has not yet read those plans. In 2025 it asked the State “to submit the Master Plan for the Urban Development of Greater Essaouira (SDAU) and the Plan for the Development and Safeguarding of the Medina (PASME) in their entirety, for review by the Advisory Bodies, in order to ensure that these plans include provisions on private property, are based on the Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) approach” and “contribute to maintaining the Outstanding Universal Value of the property, and the other multiple values of the property, such as those relating to its socio-economic aspects”, with a report due by 1 December 2026. For an owner, it is the PASME, not Law 22-80 alone, that says what can be done with a medina house: heights, façades, materials, uses. Any project follows the building permit with the heritage opinion and the PASME’s requirements; and the land, more than anywhere, is checked before any payment, as Land title vs melkia explains.