A great human configuration takes place each night in this plaza. The plaza lies close by the great minaret of the Almohads, completed in the year 1175. It is a place for snake charmers, musicians, acrobats, hustlers, beggers, story tellers, sellers of herbs and medicines...who come to be surrounded by groups formed from the thousands of Moroccans who find this as a kind of ultimate street art. Some have seen this as the place where the sub Sahara tribes and their goods met those from the north, from Spain and Europe, from the Atlas Mountains whose snows are in the distance. And now all these places and peoples are joined by the European tourists who find this a key part of their vacation package.
But what I have noticed as the thousands converge each night is that the tourists are either on the terraces of the restaurants that surround the plaza or down eating in the hundreds of tents that serve up lamb, chicken, sheep heads, snails, oranges, soups, nuts, tajines, couscous and serve them on long tables, the staff calling out to you in French. Spanish, English to sit down and eat by the hundreds. As if Times Square were converted each evening into a vast foodie emporium where all the world sat down and ate together.
