• MOROCCAN CULTURE | ART | CUISINE | MUSIC | CRAFTSMANSHIP

DELVE INTO PROFUSE MOROCCAN CULTURE

Traveling through Morocco, you discover a land of art and history. Everywhere, heritage seamlessly blends to form a rich and varied culture preserved by museums and art galleries. Several Moroccan cities brim with treasures. Enough to fuel up your imagination.
Morocco’s culinary heritage embraces the country’s deep-rooted traditions and cultural variety. Couscous, Tajine, Pastilla, Mrouzia, and R’fissa are some of the emblematic dishes of the country that you can’t resist.  Though composed of various unique flavors and scents, Moroccan cuisine draws its originality from a combination of Berber, Arab-Andalusian, and Jewish culinary traditions.
Moroccan cuisine has become widely celebrated in the last few years, thanks to its fresh, bright flavors and rich history. Simple meals of freshly prepared fish or grilled, marinated meats served with the cooked vegetable salads so popular in the country vie with elaborate feasts of savory meat pies redolent with Andalusian blends of spices or roasted leg of lamb.
While some Moroccan chefs celebrate Old World recipes, including the Abbadi family of La Maison Bleue in Fez, others bring a contemporary approach to employing the traditional ingredients, including chef Barnaby Jones of Marrakech’s Amanjena hotel, who blends the local condiment, salt-preserved lemons, with almond paste to garnish a slice of pâté de foie gras. Favorite dishes include Couscous (a semolina grain served with meat and vegetables), Mechoui (lamb roasted on a spit), Pastilla (a flaky pastry often stuffed with pigeon and almonds or with chicken and almonds), and Tagine (a stew cooked using an earthenware dish) all complemented by an after meal cup of the ever popular Moroccan mint tea.

Moroccan Cultures

Hassan II Mosque Casablanca

Moroccan culture & arts emerged through a wide set of influences, including North African, Mediterranean, and French colonial sources and pan-African, Indian, contemporary Italian, and Swedish design to create a style of living at once global and distinctively local. Today, the emergence of a new approach to architecture blending craft, interior design, and cuisine has given birth to what we call “An Architectural Revolution” spearheaded by a growing community of local and international designers, hoteliers, and chefs de cuisine.


The influence of the Berbers represents the oldest cornerstone. Berbers have lived in the deserts and mountains since prehistoric times and build morocco art and culture. Berber architecture includes the castles of red earth called Kasbahs, from which the ruling families controlled the caravan routes across the Sahara desert and through the Atlas Mountains. Berber crafts feature colorful carpets and carved doors with geometric patterns.

The creators of the new Moroccan Arts also find inspiration in traditional Berber building materials, handmade bricks and rough wooden beams among them. The Arab armies that swept North Africa in the seventh century AD and established Islam as the region’s dominant cultural force laid the second cornerstone of the new Moroccan style. Along with a new religion and language, they also brought a new design vocabulary. Because Islam forbids the representation of animate forms, this language consisted of elaborate patterns of stars and other geometric shapes, abstracted plant forms, and the calligraphy known as arabesque.The creators of the new Moroccan Arts also find inspiration in traditional Berber building materials, handmade bricks and rough wooden beams among them. The Arab armies that swept North Africa in the seventh century AD and established Islam as the region’s dominant cultural force laid the second cornerstone of the new Moroccan style. Along with a new religion and language, they also brought a new design vocabulary. Because Islam forbids the representation of animate forms, this language consisted of elaborate patterns of stars and other geometric shapes, abstracted plant forms, and the calligraphy known as arabesque.


The Arabs also brought a Persian palette of blue and white with their ceramics. After conquering North Africa, the Arabs pressed into Spain to establish the Islamic stronghold called el Andalus by the early eighth century. They set in place the third cornerstone of the new Moroccan style: the Andalusian culture, which represents a marriage of Arab and Berber influences with the Hispano-Roman roots of southern Spain.


Roman architectural forms featuring columns and loggia gained prominence combined with Arab-inspired decoration, including zellij (intricate geometric mosaics of cut ceramic tile) and tagguebbast (filigree-like borders of plaster carved while damp). The French placed the final cornerstone of the new Moroccan style during the protectorate (1912 to 1956), when they imported European building techniques and architects to construct buildings in the art deco style, often incorporating decorative flourishes borrowed from Morocco. With its pure geometric forms and intense colors, Andalusian decoration proved a perfect complement to the European art deco style, as demonstrated most famously at Marrakech’s La Mamounia Hotel, which opened its doors to an international clientele in 1923. During the last few decades, King Hassan II and his son, King Mohammed VI, protected and preserved Morocco’s architectural heritage and fostered the continued practice of its age-old crafts. They encouraged the purchase of architecturally significant palaces and private homes by local entrepreneurs and westerners with the resources to restore and transform them into guesthouses, hotels, and restaurants catering to the country’s growing international tourist trade. By so doing, these monarchs set the stage for Morocco’s contemporary style revolution.  A visit to Morocco today, whether to the cosmopolitan realms of Marrakech, Rabat, and Casablanca, the ancient walled city of Fez, the wind-swept coastal town of Essaouira, or the mysterious Routes des Kasbahs in the Atlas mountains, allows travellers to discover the living legacy of these historical influences. Grand hotels are dating from the French protectorate blend early twentieth-century art deco stylishness with Moroccan decorative elegance. Intimate Riads, as the guesthouses operated in former grand urban homes are called, reveal a blend of traditional domestic architecture, with rooms arranged around colonnaded courtyards and the chic tastes of contemporary interior designers. The highpoint, both literary and figuratively, of a visit to a Riad may be the traditional breakfast of freshly squeezed orange juice, homemade bread, and local honey served on a rooftop terrace overlooking the Mazelike streets of Fez or the distant peaks of the Atlas outside Marrakesh.

Moroccan cuisine

Moroccan Couscous

Couscous is the most renowned Moroccan dish, coarse semolina steamed with vegetables and spices served with lamb or chicken. Traditionally couscous is not a dish you would find at restaurants, but it is the food the locals eat on special days and the best couscous you could have is at a Moroccan household. If you wish to eat it at the restaurant remember to order it a few hours before you go.

Moroccan Tajine

Amongst the most sought-after dishes in Morocco is Tajine. With a very particular cooking method and multiple versions, this dish never ceases to delight the most demanding gourmets ! Food such as fish, chicken, meat, vegetables, and sometimes nuts, plums and apricots, are steamed with a bit of spices that enhances its flavour.

Moroccan Harrira ( Soup)

A delicious soup made with tomatoes, chickpeas, lentils, onions and a blend of Moroccan spices, the Harira will definitely be your favourite appetizer all through the trip. Muddy in colour, but exquisite in taste, Harira is one of those spicy dishes which will remind you of Morocco forever.

Moroccan Starters

Usually served at the beginning of meals, Moroccan starters are presented as an accompaniment to main dishes. They vary from one region to another, but generally consist of a Moroccan salad of either raw or cooked vegetables, Briouates stuffed with chicken or minced meat, a ratatouille of peppers and tomatoes - the so-called Tektouta - and the famous Zaâlouk which is an eggplant puree. Each recipe has a special seasoning, and brings out its own flavour and colour.

Mechoui

Steming from Turkish culture, Mechoui is a traditional way of cooking a whole lam or sheep smothered in a clay oven.

Pastilla

Served in puff pastry form, the pastilla is either filled with fish, chicken, pigeon, or with almond. This finger licking pastry is light and subtle perfectly made for sweet and savoury lovers.

Rfissa

Also known as "Trid", the R’fissa originates in Casablanca. It is one of the deep-seated traditions of Moroccan dishes. This dish is made with Moroccan flaky pancakes or msemmens, chicken with onion broth, coriander, ras el hanout, lentils and fenugreek. It’s steeped in flavour and beautifully aromatic with spices.

Tanjia

Traditionally prepared with lamb or veal in a terracotta jar, Tanjia is the staple dish of Marrakech. Long hours are necessary for its cooking, which is done in the local oven. The so tender and flavoursome meat is delights the most discerning gourmets.

Bread

Bread is the main staple of Morocco, that is mostly served with all traditional main dishes. White bread, wholemeal bread, sourdough bread, there are for all the tastes.

Chebbakia

Being the second staple of Morocco, Chebakia is the most popular and most favourite cake in the country. It is served with Moroccan soup or as a side-dish to tea, and is traditionnally prepared in the sacred month of Ramadan.

Gazelle Horns ( Kaab El Ghzal )

It’s hard to talk about Moroccan pastries without mentionning the famous « Gazelle horns ». Made of crushed almonds perfectly wrapped in a thin paste with a smell of orange blossom. It is the perfect side-dish to a thirst-quenching green mint tea.

Ghriba

These delights top of the list of all pastries that are steming from Maghreb and oriental cuisine. In own, you’ll find ones in pastries, but also in small shops in the medinas. Made from almonds and semolina, they are often sprinkled with sesame seeds for added flavour.

Mint Tea

More than just a tea, green mint tea is a ceremonial beverage deep-rooted in Moroccan traditions. This thirst-quenching tea is served in a small, colourful glass. Whether it’s served in the city or in the countryside, gren mint tea is traditionally poured one metre high. Mint tea is often used to welcome guests in a friendly atmosphere.

Fruit Juice

The Jemaa-El-Fena square in Marrakech is full of small stalls selling fresh fruit juices that you can make up according to your taste ! This magical place, alone, is home to more than twenty fruit juice, water and soda vendors organized in horse-drawn carriages.

Diary Delights

Set out for a culinary journey beautifully aromatic with exquisite and rare flavours! In every region, you'll be served Leben (fermented milk) as a side dish to your couscous and Raïb (traditional Moroccan yoghurt) to delight your taste buds. In the north of Morocco, goat's cheese is mostly consumed. As for the Sahara, camel cheese is a real delicacy !

Moroccan Craftsmanship & Music

Moroccan Wood artist in Fez

With a culture that goes back thirty centuries from the imprints left by the Romans and Berbers to those left by the most recent Arab civilizations, Moroccan artists from across the kingdom have sophisticated their creative effort into producing infinite variations of abstract and geometric motifs.  Exquisite Moroccan craftsmanship is evident on hand-woven rugs, ceramics, engraved jewellery and other metalwork. Popular with tourists and natives, the decorative henna tattoos often display motifs from all these sources. The extraordinary craftsmanship of the Touareg for instance occupies a fundamental place in ritual and ceremony, acts as safeguards against evil or disease and serves as a means of propitiating ancestors or gods. These remarkable adornments speak of values and beliefs, achievements and status. An insider’s tour of the souks, or craftsmen’s markets, in Morocco's art and culture, demonstrates the timeless appeal and adaptability of the materials, methods, and visual language of the country’s crafts. Turned, carved, and inlaid wood; pierced, twisted, and forged metal; glazed ceramics; hand-woven and dyed textiles; bold jewellery of silver and semi-precious stones – in the hands of master craftsmen and women, these materials are wrought into traditional patterns or transformed into contemporary styles unlike those found elsewhere in the world.

Gnawa in Khmalia Village - Merzouga

Music is an integral part of Moroccan life. The traditional form of Arabic music, or Andalous, is performed using lutes, mandolins and flutes and is occasionally accompanied by a singer. Popular Berber music accompanies dancers and singers and is recognizable by the ancestral rhythmic sounds of tambourines (long, narrow drums). Andalusi: A Living remnant of the brilliant Spanish-Maghreban civilization, the Andalusi music of Morocco perpetuates the âla, a broad repertory of songs and instrumental music which Moroccans have jealously preserved thanks to a strong oral tradition. Besides morocco, art and culture Moroccan music are very famous among travellers.