Morocco is a destination for sensualists – its tastes and fragrances as indelible as its sights, its exoticism as intensely real as it is dreamy. By  Marcus Brewster of the well-known local Marcus Brewster PR

Put in culinary terms, Morocco is like a pastilla, the mille-feuille like pancake dish that mixes savoury with sweet and is generally served at special occasions such as weddings.

The first layer is the old Morocco of the imperial cities. Rising like a crescent moon from landlocked Marrakesh to Rabat on the Atlantic and Meknes and Fes to the east, these are the settlements that time forgot. The alleys of these walled cities (medinas) are too narrow for cars so everything from computers to cartons of cloves must be led in on the backs of donkeys. The walls ring with the warning cry “Balak!” (step aside – donkey coming!), and one’s eyes are dazzled with the jewel-like colours of the spice merchant: saffron, cumin, paprika.

Over that layer is the French colonial influence encountered architecturally in the art deco public buildings and residential villas of the nouvelle ville (new city) which inevitably abuts the medieval city walls of the old Imperial cities. Although the French Foreign Legion is long gone, the Gallic flavour still finds expression in the art of the patisserie, the ability to make perfect breads and the fact that French is the de facto second official language. France now sends tourists rather than Legionnaires to Morocco so it’s one foreign country where you are more likely to hear French spoken than American in your hotel.

Then there’s modern Morocco albeit only really experienced in the biggest cities and/or seaside resorts, created especially to cater for the sun-obsessed venerations of European tourists. If you want to spend a week lying at a pool, you could safely come to Morocco and never stir from your sun-lounger (Marrakesh has 310 sunny days a year and only 300mm annual rainfall) but that would be a very poor dish. Only one layer of the pastilla so to speak.

Finally there is the Morocco of elegant, elegiac memory: heiress Barbara Hutton’s fantastical sojourn in Tangiers decadence, Yves Saint Laurent’s garden, Malcolm Forbes’s legendary 80^th birthday party. How much is myth and how much is the sun-faded sepia of times gone by?

Jackie Kennedy charmed the then King and was given a bijou cliff-top palace on the road from Marrakesh to Essaouira. That latter seaside fort town was the location for Orson Welles’s Cannes Palme d’Or masterpiece Othello filmed with the help of the town’s inhabitants when he ran out of finance and to whom he dedicated his award. At the next village of Diabut, Jimi Hendrix passed three lost years (or was it only one drug hazed summer) and was inspired to write “Castles in the Sand” about the ruins on that stretch of coastline.

All roads lead to Casablanca however, not the Hollywood-noir of Bogart and Bergman which is all but invisible, but the noisy insistence of a busy capital city. If there is one unmissable sight it is the great mosque of Hassan II. Constructed less than 20 years ago, and second only in size to its sister in Mecca, the mosque can accommodate 120 000 worshippers. Constructed as much to put the city on the map as to showcase the skills of local workers, the Hassan II mosque is as monumental and impressive a structure as the Coliseum is to Rome.

You can still find traces of ancient Rome at Volubilis which was the furthest garrison point of the empire (the troops withdrew in 285 AD). Anywhere else in Europe, Volubilis would be overrun by tourist coaches and cruise ship passengers. But here on the road from Meknes, ‘the Moroccan Versailles’, to Fes, the most complete, most historically untouched city of the Arab world, Volubilis stands open to the setting sun. It offers mosaic floors, including a suite of the Labours of Hercules, to rival anything in the archaeological catalogue of must-see sights.

After Casablanca, Marrakesh is the second largest city in Morocco but is indubitably the epicentre of any visitor’s experience. Marrakesh is the ‘pearl of the south’ founded by the Almoravides dynasty at the end of the 12^th Century. The city is located in the heart of a palm grove and surrounded by snow-topped mountains making it possible to lie at the pool in the morning and ski in the afternoon.

In Marrakesh, it is prohibited to paint your building anything other than pink and no construction can be higher than three stories so as to not eclipse the glory or drama of the Koutoubia minaret. This gives the city a unity that is pleasing to the eye, not least to Madonna and Sting who are rumoured to have homes among the palm trees here. Although there is no shortage of palaces, museums and gardens, the rub of Marrakesh is the Djemaa El Fna (Assembly of Death) square. By day a marketplace, at dusk the Djemaa acquires an otherworldly – almost voodoo – entrancement. Little old ladies do tarot readings, other old crones write spells for amulets to be placed underneath pillows, snake charmers and fools in costume entertain circlets of crowds. Superstition is still very much woven into the passage of Moroccan life.

Outside of the cities, the Moroccan vista offers small villages from the High Atlas Mountains to the Atlantic coastal settlements of Agadir and Essaouira. Otherwise known as Mogodor, Essaouira is protected by stone battlements from invading pirates and by blue painted colonnades and shutters from the sun. The town’s artisanal product is marquetry made with thuya wood which has the hardness of mahogany and is most often turned into boxes and chess sets. If not wood-workers, the local populace are fishermen so seafood is definitely on the menu here.

It is impossible to visit Morocco without relishing the opportunity to immerse yourself in its cuisine. A stroll through a street market in the smallest mountain village or populous city souk will evoke an aromatic kaleidoscope of fragrant quinces, voluptuous artichokes, oranges as sweet as sunrises and tomatoes as redolent as sunsets.

These are some of the ingredients that you may find in the national dish – the tagine – which is an eight-hour slow-cooked main course that releases all its flavours to succulent effect. The tagine is nothing if not versatile: juicy beef with fat prunes, chicken with olives and preserved lemons, spicy lamb with apricots and couscous.

For its mix of colour and craft, for the sounds of the souk and the taste of adventure, there is little to touch Morocco for the appeal to the senses.

Giggling Gourmet Jenny Morris is offering a 16-day Taste Morocco culinary tour in October. For more information email info@gigglinggourmet.com