Laayoune
— — a white city the Spaniards drew on the red sand.
Not only on a wall.
“A low white city above the dry course of the Saguia el-Hamra, set on red Saharan ground about twenty-five kilometres from the Atlantic. The Spanish built most of what stands now in the 1940s and 1950s: domed plazas, tile fountains, a cathedral that still keeps Sunday mass. The Moroccan administration has added the wide avenues and the green-tiled Mechouar Square. The air is dry and the light is hard, and at dusk the walls go the colour of warm bread. From the studio.
Laayoune, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Laâyoune sits in the valley of the Saguia el-Hamra, a usually-dry watercourse on the northern edge of the Western Sahara, about 25 kilometres inland from the Atlantic coast. With a population of roughly 271,000 (2014 census), it is the largest city in the disputed territory and the seat of the Moroccan-administered Laâyoune-Sakia El Hamra region. The territory's status remains contested between the Kingdom of Morocco and the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic; the United Nations mission MINURSO has had its headquarters in Laâyoune since 1991.
Most of the older city centre was laid out and built by the Spanish between 1940 and 1975, when the territory was the colony of Spanish Sahara. The whitewashed Cathedral of Saint Francis of Assisi from 1954 still serves a small congregation; a covered souk, the Parador hotel, and a series of domed plazas date from the same period. After 1976 the Moroccan administration expanded the city north and east with wide avenues, the green-tiled Place du Mechouar, and the Moulay Abdel Aziz Grand Mosque. The architectural mix of Spanish colonial and Moroccan modernist is unusual in the region.
The climate is hot desert, moderated by the cold Canary Current offshore. Average highs run from 22°C in January to about 32°C in August; rainfall is under 50 millimetres a year and most of it falls in two or three brief winter storms. Sandstorms from the Sahara, known locally as the irifi, can darken the sky for days. The cold Atlantic produces a thick coastal fog at dawn that often reaches inland to the city, then burns off by mid-morning to leave the long flat light the dunes are known for.