Tétouan
— — the white the Andalusians brought across.
Not only on a wall.
“A walled medina in northern Morocco, an hour from the Mediterranean coast and a few hundred miles from Granada. Refugees from Andalusia rebuilt the town after 1492; their tilework and white-on-white walls still define it. The medina was inscribed by UNESCO in 1997, one of the smallest and best preserved in the Maghreb. Seven gates, seven quarters, and a single long market street that holds the centre. — from the studio
Tétouan, 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.
Tétouan sits at about 240 metres in the foothills of the Rif, ten kilometres inland from the Mediterranean port of Martil. The current city was founded in 1305 and repopulated after 1492 by Andalusian Muslims and Jews expelled from Granada. Its walled medina, roughly thirty hectares enclosed by seven gates, was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1997 for its near-intact Andalusian character. The wider municipality holds about 380,000 residents and serves as the capital of the Tanger-Tétouan-Al Hoceïma region.
The medina's walls are lime-washed earth and stone, kept white through annual repainting that pre-dates Spanish protectorate rule. Houses turn inward to courtyards in the Andalusian manner; door surrounds are picked out in green zellige tilework cut to eight-pointed stars. The Hassan II royal palace closes the south side of Place Hassan II; its bronze doors and arched gallery were added between 1948 and 1962. Below the medina, the Ensanche district carries Spanish art-deco facades from the 1913 to 1956 protectorate years.
Tétouan is reached most easily from Tangier, about sixty kilometres north along the A6 motorway, or from Ceuta at the Bab Sebta border crossing to the east. The medina is best walked early; the tanners' quarter, the carpenters' street, and the Jewish Mellah all open from about nine in the morning. The Archaeological Museum off Place Al Jala holds Roman mosaics lifted from Lixus and Tamuda. Friday afternoons are quietest, when the souks slow for prayer at the Saadian-era Grand Mosque.