10 Best Things to Do in Tangier

       Things to Do Tangier 

This rakish town on the coast of Gibraltar has transformed at an alarming rate since 2010. The container port has been outside of the city, the walled Medina is safer, the beaches are cleaner, and the bay-front Corniche was in 2018. There has never been a better time to rediscover Tangier, the city that inspired Delacroix, Matisse, and Paul Bowles, as well as where William S. Burroughs was born. Burroughs wrote Naked Lunch. Away from the city, you may relax on Blue Flag beaches and travel to Cap Spartel and Cap Malabata to see Gibraltar and Tarifa across the strait. Let’s have a look at the greatest things to do in Tangier:

1. Medina

The White City’s maze-like Medina pours down the slope from the Kasbah to the north, providing fleeting glimpses of the Bay of Tangier through its gorge-like lanes.Tangier’s changing attitude may also be in this historic city, which was once off-limits to tourists. Petit Socco, with its multicultural architecture and cafe terraces, harkens back to the days of the International Zone.

2. Dar el Makhzen 

The palace built by Ismail Ibn Sharif, after re-conquering Tangier after two centuries of English occupation, presides over Medina’s northern lanes. Dar el Makhzen, erected on the remnants of the English “Upper Castle,” housed Morocco’s Sultans while they toured Tangier. Sultan Abd al-Hafid, accompanied by 168 people, became a permanent resident here after being in 1912 by the Treaty of Fez, which made Yusef of Morocco Sultan under the French Protectorate. 

3. Kasbah Museum

The palace is an excellent spot to peruse hundreds of years of Moroccan craftsmanship up until the conclusion of Tangier’s English rule in 1684. There are bronzes and mosaics on display from the Roman cities of Volubilis, Cotta, and Lixus. There are also antique objects from closer to home, such as urns, lead sarcophagi, and a recreated tomb from a Phoenician necropolis on the Kasbah Hill’s Ocean side. A beautiful Manueline window from the adjacent coastal village of Ksar es Seghir dates from the Portuguese period.

4. Caves of Hercules

This cave, which is both natural and part man-made, is in folklore and is on a rocky outcrop between two magnificent Atlantic beaches. According to legend, Hercules remained here while preparing for his 11th labour. This was to take the golden apples from the Hesperides’ Garden. Some ancient Greek writers located the garden near the ancient city of Lixus on the Atlantic coast. It’s also easy to spot the many grooves in the walls made by Berbers who mined millstones from the walls for generations.

5. American Legation

The first property purchased by the United States abroad is in the far south of Medina. The American Legation was in this Moorish-style stuccoed structure in 1821, and it is on the National Register of Historic Places in the United States. The property, which includes a cultural centre, library, and museum devoted to Arabic studies, represents the 1786 Moroccan-American Treaty of Friendship, which is still in effect today. 

6. Cap Spartel

The scrub-topped promontory that marks the entrance to the Strait of Gibraltar is up the coast from the Caves of Hercules. Cap Spartel, which is a reserve, rises more than 300 metres above sea level. The ocean off the cape has seen fights throughout the American War of Independence and the Spanish Civil War, and it is for an archipelago assumed to have been approximately 9400 BCE. Spartel remains a bank of sand with a summit 56 metres below sea level. The lighthouse atop the hill was built in 1864 as well as was Morocco’s first in the modern era.

7. Achakar Beach

Between the Caves of Hercules and Cap Spartel is a beautiful public beach that has recently been many Blue Flags for hygiene, water quality, facilities, and lifeguard coverage. The highlight, but, is the sheer natural beauty of this long and broad beach, which faces west and is steep, gravelly cliffs providing magnificent sunset views. The surf will be too severe for children, but the waves break a long way out, and there is a vast shallow region where children can paddle with supervision. Achakar Beach, like most Moroccan tourist beaches, offers camel rides.

8. Corniche de Tanger

Another site where the last decade’s investment is visible is on the bayfront promenade. This curves around Tangier’s whole Bay, from Merkala Beach in the west to Cap Malabata in the east. Most people associate the Corniche with the stretch between the new tourist port and Villa Harris, which includes two beaches to the east at Plage Municipale and Plage Malabata. The views are breathtaking, stretching across the harbour to Cap Malabata and the shape of Tarifa on the opposite side of the Strait.

9. Parc Perdicaris 

The route to Cap Spartel runs along the southern edge of this idyllic coastal woodland, on the western outskirts of the city. The park is named after Greek-American ambassador and Ion Perdicaris (1840-1925), who owned a house on the property. When Perdicaris was kidnapped in 1904, it sparked an international crisis, and Theodore Roosevelt’s response to the “Perdicaris Affair” is to have helped him win the election that year. 

10. Grand Socco

Tangier’s former central marketplace, which straddles the Medina and the Ville Nouvelle, has been converted into a transport hub. Tangier’s story is up by the moniker Grand Socco, which is a Spanish corruption of “souk.” The boundaries are with cafes where you can see life at the meeting point of new and ancient Tangier. Although large-scale trading has ceased, there are still many fruits and arts and crafts on Grand Socco.