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Jemaâ el-Fna Square is true the heart of the Marrakech medina, the crossroads of the city where everything is concentrated. A real permanent theatre scene, it is the most important place in the Medina, where public life takes place day and night.
Historically, the “Place des trépassés” was the place of the decisions of justice (12th century). Then, as a link between the western cities and the Atlas and desert lands, it quickly became the place of commercial exchanges and animations of the city.
As the day goes by, the shops and fruit juice stands open one after the other…
At 1pm, the traffic becomes forbidden to make way for the shows and other exhibitors who start to bring Marrakech to life with the sound of instruments and the colours of Berber costumes. The terraces of the cafés and restaurants fill up.
A real open-air show, we are caught up in a plethora of stands where everything is in motion, all kinds of entertainment, fairground vendors, street artists, fire-eaters, henna tattoo artists, monkey showers, snake charmers, fortune tellers, water carriers, etc… provide the daily spectacle. And all this in the midst of the din of the many bands playing their ecstatic music next to each other.
At nightfall, Jemaâ el-Fna takes on its full intensity. The artists are replaced by the food stalls. It is a place of mixing, a space where ethnic groups, social classes and generations move around. Everyone meets here in the evening.
“The cultural space of Jemaa el-Fna Square” has been listed as intangible cultural heritage since 2008 (proclaimed in 2001) and as world heritage since 1985 by UNESCO.
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