Marrakech's new Euro chic

Marrakech, Morocco — SOMEONE must have rubbed a brass lamp and let a genie out of a bottle. That's the only conclusion I can draw, given the changes to Marrakech since my last visit a decade ago.

In those days, the low, burnt-umber-colored city on the Haouz Plain in southern Morocco had the ambiguous charms of a Muslim imperial capital and the hurly-burly of a caravansary. Nearly everything cried out to be photographed.

But the city was dirty and difficult to navigate, with few street signs in the maze-like medina, and it had only a handful of hotels and restaurants suitable for tourists. At night, the nonexistent sidewalks of Marrakech were rolled up.

When I returned a month ago, I found the eight gates of the walled city, built in 1070, flung open wide.

With a burgeoning population of about a million, Marrakech is cleaner and more tourist-friendly. On my previous visit, I was surrounded by annoying would-be guides and touts whenever I stepped outdoors. For the most part, that's no longer the case.

An influx of Northern European snowbirds has slowed the retreat of the moneyed classes from the medina to the suburbs.

Many of the newcomers are architects and designers who have restored old townhouses as restaurants and guesthouses, helping to make Marrakech the coolest, chicest city in the Maghreb.

A European influence

THE Europeans brought their sense of style with them so that, these days, almost everywhere you turn in Marrakech you see something new: traditional djellaba robes and babouche slippers in fun, new fabrics; European-inspired gourmet twists on recipes for such old Moroccan standards as tajine, a ubiquitous stew; and a host of trendy new boutique hotels.

Best of all, people have rediscovered the elegant architecture of the hermitic medina, which blends austere Islamic abstraction with Moorish embellishment, sub-Saharan design and the colorful folk art of the Berber people of the Atlas Mountains.

The genie behind the city's transformation was King Mohammed VI, who took the throne of the democratic monarchy of Morocco in 1999. Two years later, he launched an initiative to ready the country to receive 10 million tourists by 2010.

The program has encouraged foreign investment, especially in hotels, and new airlines, such as budget carrier Atlas Blue, to reach new Moroccan destinations such as Agadir, an Atlantic port in southwestern Morocco.