The Portuguese Fortress is the heart of El Jadida's old city, the fortified colony of Mazagan that Portugal built on Morocco's Atlantic coast in the early 1500s. Its bastions and ramparts are a rare North African example of Renaissance military planning translated into stone, sea wind, and Moroccan urban life.
Walk the walls slowly, especially late in the day when the Atlantic light catches the ramparts. The circuit gives you the best sense of Mazagan as a compact fortified town: sea on one side, lanes and whitewashed houses inside, and the cistern and old churches tucked into the grid below.