Tetouan City

TETOUAN : The daughter of Granada, the white dove, are names that designate the cubic, white city, which from 1913 to 1956, date of independence, was the capital of the Spanish protectorate, its dazzling medina together with that of Chefchauen is the most Andalusian of the Moroccan medinas, its medina is also one of the best in the whole country declared cultural heritage by UNESCO.

For years Spanish has been spoken in its streets, but not only when it was the capital of the protectorate, it was spoken when the massive arrival of Jews from 1492 onwards settled there. This city with an imperishable Andalusian aroma welcomed the constant exile of Andalusians fleeing the Christian power of the current Spain and Portugal, the refugees gave it its main Andalusian characteristic.

A first batch was in the fifteenth century and a later wave in the sixteenth century. The sister of Fez, as it is also known is 30 km. kilometers from Ceuta, with good communication with this city and Tangier but is the great unknown, the city forgotten by tourism and travelers.

The most important thing to highlight in the white city is its beautiful medina that descends gently down the mountain Jbel Dersa, is also a city with a rich handicraft, particularly its embroidery that follow the Andalusian inspiration, as the music created there and that is one of the great branches of Andalusian music, cuisine, architecture are constantly reminded of the Spanish proximity and rich Andalusian heritage.

Also Tetouan was once a great city of Sephardic Jewish tradition that has left a very important legacy of romances and songs in the Jewish-Spanish but created in this city.

Surrounding the walls the Spanish built the capital city of the protectorate, are typically Spanish houses with an ornamental taste for the neo Mudejar, in the square, at the end of what was the great artery during the Spanish occupation stands a church in which at sunset you can still see people devoutly attend the Catholic rites.

it makes the border between the European city and the medina known as Fdan Square, officially Hassan II Square. Tetouan has a small but interesting archaeological museum with Roman pieces from the city of Thamuda, Lixus or Volubilis, has another museum dedicated to the handicraft, near the door bab el Okla linked to a Grenadian who rightly saw in the early twentieth century that the world of handicraft was going to suffer a decline and created the school of craftsmen to preserve it, a school that still continues, was called Bertuchi and is still missed in that city.

His creation was also the so-called Institute of Fine Arts, the training institution par excellence of the studies of fine arts, recently in the old train station that linked it to Ceuta has risen a small museum of contemporary art.

Particularly interesting are also the cemeteries, near bab Makbara (cemetery gate) is the old Jewish cemetery and near it a Muslim cemetery.

And finally close to this city is the great resort of sun and beach in rio Martil, or the spectacular Mediterranean beaches that surround this city to discover.