Medina Murals

Outdoor murals painted during the annual arts festival that have decorated Asilah's walls since the 1970s

Asilah's whitewashed medina walls have served as an outdoor gallery since the first Moussem Cultural International in 1978. Each year the festival invites artists to paint new murals on the walls of the town, and the accumulation over nearly fifty years means that walking through the medina is a route through layered artistic history: some murals are recent and vivid, others have faded and been painted over, with traces of earlier work visible at the edges.

The best concentration of murals is in the streets between the main medina entrance and the sea walls. Recurring motifs reflect the town's Atlantic identity — waves, fish, boats — alongside abstract and geometric work in the Moorish tradition. Street art of this quality in a UNESCO-recognised historic town is relatively rare; the combination of authentic medina architecture and deliberate artistic intervention gives Asilah a distinct character.

The murals are not labelled or mapped; discovering them is part of the experience of wandering the medina. The annual festival in August is the best time to see the most recent additions and to watch artists at work on the walls.

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A story
The murals tradition began in 1978, when the Moussem Cultural International invited artists to paint the walls of the medina as a statement of cultural renewal. The town was then in considerable decline; the festival — organised by the local politician Mohamed Benaissa — was partly an act of civic reclamation. Within a decade, Asilah had become internationally known as an artists' town, drawing painters and musicians from across the Arab world and Europe.