Tangier is a city of borders and legend. Perched above the Strait of Gibraltar, where the Mediterranean embraces the Atlantic and the coast of Spain is visible to the naked eye, it has for centuries been the gateway between Africa and Europe. Phoenicians, Romans, Portuguese, English and sultans fought over it, and in the 20th century it was an international city unlike any other in the world, run by several powers at once, with no clear law, a refuge for spies, smugglers, exiles and bohemians. That sulphurous, cosmopolitan aura seduced writers such as Paul Bowles, William Burroughs, Tennessee Williams and the Beat Generation poets, and painters such as Matisse and Delacroix.
Today Tangier is enjoying a spectacular revival. The port of Tanger Med has become the largest in the Mediterranean, the Al Boraq high-speed train links it with Casablanca, and its waterfront has been completely remodelled. But beneath the modernity, the old Tangier still beats: the white medina climbing towards the Kasbah, the cafés with steaming teapots where the writers used to sit, the Zoco Chico as its bustling heart, and the Atlantic light that so fascinated painters. It is a city for wandering aimlessly, getting lost and feeling two continents meet.
This guide covers the essentials of Tangier with a practical eye: what to see in the medina and the Kasbah, how to get away to the legendary Cape Spartel and the Caves of Hercules, where to have a tea steeped in literary history, how to get around by petit taxi without being overcharged, and how to use Tangier as a springboard to Chefchaouen or to Spain. A useful warning from the outset: in Tangier, more than in any other Moroccan city, ALWAYS agree on the price beforehand (taxis, guides, shopping) and haggle calmly and with good humour; it is part of the game.
Tangier is one of the oldest inhabited cities in the Maghreb. Legend links it to the giant Antaeus and to Hercules, but the real city was founded by the Phoenicians around the 5th century BC as a trading colony (Tingis), which later became Carthaginian and then Roman: under Rome it became the capital of the province of Mauretania Tingitana. After the Vandals and Byzantines, the Muslim conquest of the 7th century brought it into the Arab-Berber world; it was from here that Tariq ibn Ziyad's army set out in 711 to conquer the Iberian Peninsula, and the great medieval traveller Ibn Battuta, born in 1304, was from Tangier. In the 15th-17th centuries it was Portuguese, then passed as a dowry to the English crown (which abandoned it and blew up its defences in 1684), and returned to the rule of the Alaouite sultans. The most unusual chapter came in the 20th century: because of its strategic position, the European powers turned it in 1923 into the Tangier International Zone, a territory jointly administered by France, Spain, the United Kingdom and other countries, with special status, financial freedom and a libertine atmosphere that drew spies, millionaires, smugglers and a whole literary and artistic bohemia. The international city came to an end in 1956, when Tangier was reintegrated into independent Morocco. After decades of some neglect, in the 21st century it has been reborn with the Tanger Med port, the high-speed train and an intense urban overhaul. The full story, with names and dates, is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The region of the Strait and the Rif: Tangier, the gateway between Africa and Europe, once Roman Tingis and famous as an international zone of spies and writers; and Chefchaouen, the blue town founded by Andalusians, in mountains that were the cradle of Abd el-Krim's rebellion.
Read the history of The north: Tangier and Chefchaouen →If you book from here we earn a commission and you pay no more. Prices and availability come from Civitatis.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Few cities in the world carry so much legend before they even have a written history. Greek mythology placed the Pillars of Hercules at the Strait of Tangier, and even gave the city a founder: Tingis, wife of the giant Antaeus, whom Hercules was said to have defeated on this very coast. Behind the myth lies a very real and very ancient city: it was founded by the Phoenicians around the 5th century BC as a trading post on the route through the strait, under the name Tingi or Tingis.
After the Phoenician decline, the city passed into the Carthaginian orbit and then to the Berber kingdom of Mauretania. With the Roman annexation, Tingis reached its first great golden age: in the 1st century AD, Emperor Claudius made it the capital of the province of Mauretania Tingitana, which took its name from the city itself. It was a thriving port, with a forum, temples and villas, woven into the trade of the western Mediterranean. Mosaics and objects from that period are now kept in the Kasbah Museum.
In the 5th and 6th centuries the Roman Empire gave way to the Vandals and then the Byzantines, who fought over control of the strait. Like so many cities on the southern shore of the Mediterranean, Tangier then went through a period of instability, waiting for the great turning point that the arrival of Islam would bring.
In the 7th century, the spread of Islam reached the Maghreb and Tangier became part of the new Arab-Berber world. The city was about to play a decisive role in the history of Europe: according to tradition, it was from this region, under the command of Tariq ibn Ziyad (the Berber governor of Tangier), that an army set out in 711, crossed the strait, landed beside the rock that would bear his name (Jabal Tariq, Gibraltar) and within a few years conquered the Visigothic kingdom of Hispania. Tangier thus became the bridgehead of al-Andalus.
Throughout the Middle Ages the city changed hands among the dynasties that ruled Morocco (the Idrisids, Almoravids, Almohads and Marinids), prospering as a port and as a hinge between Africa and the Iberian Peninsula. Its most illustrious son belongs to that golden age: Ibn Battuta, born in Tangier in 1304. This tireless traveller spent almost thirty years crossing the Islamic world and beyond (North Africa, the Middle East, Persia, India, China, sub-Saharan Africa and al-Andalus) and left in his Rihla ('The Journey') one of the great travel books of all time. He is considered the greatest traveller of the Middle Ages, covering far more ground than Marco Polo, and the city's airport is named after him.
Being a crossroads, however, also made Tangier a coveted prize. From the 15th century onwards, as the Iberian powers pushed into North Africa, the city would enter a long period of foreign rule.
In 1471 Tangier was taken by the Portuguese, who added it to their network of fortified outposts in North Africa. The city stayed under Portuguese rule for almost two centuries, apart from an interlude when it answered to the Spanish monarchy while the two crowns were united. In 1661 it changed hands unexpectedly: Portugal handed it over to England as part of the dowry of the Infanta Catherine of Braganza when she married King Charles II of England.
English Tangier was a difficult experiment. The English built a large mole and fortifications and turned it into a naval base, but they faced constant siege from the troops of the Moroccan sultan Moulay Ismail. Unable to hold the town and worn down by the cost, the English decided to abandon it in 1684, and before leaving they blew up the harbour and much of the defences so that they would not fall intact into Moroccan hands.
Tangier then returned to the rule of the Alaouite dynasty, which still governs Morocco today. During the 18th and 19th centuries the city gradually became the sultanate's 'diplomatic capital': because of its strategic position, the European powers set up their legations and consulates here. That diplomatic weight, together with the weakening of the Moroccan state in the face of European imperialism, would set the stage for the most extraordinary chapter in the city's history.
In 1912, Morocco was divided between a French protectorate (most of the country) and a Spanish one (the north and the south). But Tangier, because of its strategic value and the competing interests of so many powers, was given a status unlike any other in the world. The Tangier Statute of 1923 created the Tangier International Zone: a small territory administered jointly by France, Spain, the United Kingdom and later other countries such as Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and the United States, under the nominal sovereignty of the sultan but governed in practice by an international commission.
The result was a fascinating, contradictory city. International Tangier worked as a free zone, with hardly any customs, tax or currency controls: a paradise for banking, smuggling and every shady business imaginable. Its freedom of movement and of lifestyle, unheard of at the time, drew a one-of-a-kind cosmopolitan crowd: spies from every power (especially during the Second World War and the Cold War), eccentric millionaires, smugglers, political exiles and a whole legion of writers and artists. Matisse had already painted here; later came Paul Bowles, who settled in the city for good and made it a literary setting, his wife Jane Bowles, and the Beat Generation writers: William Burroughs wrote much of 'Naked Lunch' here, and Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Tennessee Williams and Truman Capote all passed through its cafés.
That bubble burst with independence. When Morocco regained its sovereignty in 1956, Tangier was reintegrated into the kingdom and lost its special status, which was dismantled over the following years. The international city, with all its glamour and decadence, passed into legend.
After losing its international status, Tangier went through decades of relative neglect. Left out of the big development plans, the city kept its faded charm and its community of nostalgics (Paul Bowles himself lived here until his death in 1999), but it also built up problems with infrastructure, migration and the informal economy. For a long time it was known above all as a departure point for emigration to Europe across the strait.
The change of course came in the 21st century. From the 2000s, under the new reign, Tangier became a strategic priority for the Moroccan state. The flagship project was the Tanger Med port, opened in 2007 and later expanded to become the largest port in the Mediterranean and in Africa, a huge logistics and industrial hub that attracted factories (including major car plants) and transformed the economy of the whole region. Then, in 2018, came the launch of Al Boraq, Africa's first high-speed train, linking Tangier with Rabat and Casablanca.
At the same time, the city completely redesigned its waterfront, restored its medina and its Kasbah, brought back landmark theatres and cinemas such as the Cinema Rif, and bet on culture and tourism. The old cosmopolitan Tangier, the Tangier of the Phoenicians, of Ibn Battuta, of the spies and the writers, now lives side by side with a thriving, modern city. It is still what it has always been: the gateway between two continents and two seas, the place where Africa looks out at Europe just fourteen kilometres away, and where travellers can still feel the thrill of standing at the edge of the world.
