Marrakech, the great city

"Here in these spacious palm groves...the traveller can be sure of every comfort and diversion and can contemplate with ceaseless satisfaction the stately snow-clad panorama of the Atlas Mountains.  The sun is brilliant and warm...the air crisp...the days bright, the nights cool and fresh." Winston Churchill, Daily Mail

"Fez is Europe but closed; Marrakech is Africa but open.  Fez is black, white and grey; Marrakech is red"  John Gunther, Inside Africa, 1955

"Marrakech is the great market of the south; and the south means not only the Atlas with its feudal chiefs and their wild clansmen, but all that lies beyond...: the Sahara of the veiled Tuareg, Dakar, Timbuctoo, Senegal and the Sudan."  Edith Wharton 1927

"It is a great city, the best situated in all Africa, in a fine plain, five or six degrees from the Atlas Mountain, surrounded by the richest countryside of all Mauritania.  It is clear that this city is the work of great masters because the design is as good as its execution.'  Luis de Marmol in his book Descrittione dell'Africa (1550AD).