What is the Essaouira medina vs the beach area?

Essaouira is the Morocco I send people to when they want the medina magic at a gentler, breezier scale, and the town splits naturally into two characters. The medina is the heart — a small, beautifully preserved 18th-century walled town, UNESCO-listed, all whitewashed walls and blue shutters, with sea ramparts you can walk where cannons still point out at the Atlantic. It's wonderfully easy compared to Marrakech or Fes: the grid was laid out by a French engineer, so it's far more navigable, the streets are wider, and the pace is calm. Inside you'll find art galleries (Essaouira has a real artistic streak), woodworkers carving fragrant thuya wood, a famous fish market, and the wonderfully chaotic working port where blue boats unload the day's catch beneath wheeling gulls.

The beach is the town's other half — a long, broad sweep of sand curving south along the bay, just outside the medina walls. Essaouira is one of the windiest spots on the Moroccan coast, which is why it's a magnet for windsurfers and kitesurfers; the same wind that fills their sails keeps the town cool and breezy even when inland Marrakech is baking. Along the seafront you'll find surf schools, camel and horse rides on the sand, beach cafés, and the larger resort-style hotels that prefer the open space outside the walls.

Where you stay depends on what you're after. I put most travellers in a riad inside the medina, because that's where Essaouira's charm lives — you're steps from the ramparts, the galleries, the port, and the best seafood, and you can walk everywhere. The beachfront and the strip just south suit travellers who've come specifically for water sports, who want a pool and a sea view, or who prefer a more spread-out, resort-style feel with the medina a short stroll or taxi away.

The lovely thing about Essaouira is that the two are close enough that you don't really have to choose — the medina and the beach meet right at the walls, so even from a riad you can be on the sand in ten minutes. I often use Essaouira as the decompression chapter of a Morocco trip: a couple of relaxed days of sea air, fresh fish grilled at the port, and unhurried wandering after the intensity of the imperial cities. It's the kind of place travellers don't want to leave.