Medina

This guide to Marrakesh's Medina opens with a dispute over what its central square, Jemaa el-Fnaa, actually means — readings range from the mosque at the end of the world to the assembly of the dead, tied to the square's history as a site of public execution. It traces the city's founding around 1070 by the Almoravid chieftain Abu Bakr ibn Umar, and the nineteen kilometers of iron-rich rammed-earth ramparts that still ring the old city. Look closely at the walls for the holes left by the wooden frames that built them.