The Jemaa el Fna is Marrakesh’s number one attraction by a very long chalk. A big open space right in the centre of the Medina, it transforms itself at nightfall into an open-air circus featuring storytellers, acrobats, dancers and musicians, each surrounded by their own crowd of onlookers. And there are sideshows, foodstalls and drink stands, and a magic unique in the world.

Some of the performers

• Storytellers, performers of an ancient art long established in the Arab world. Richard Hamilton’s The Last Storytellers translates some of their tales into English
• Acrobats, often teams of brothers, or fathers and sons, traditionally from the Anti-Atlas mountains near Tiznit
• Gnaoua musicians, members of a Sufi brotherhood with roots in West Africa (“Gnaoua”, like “Guinea”, probably referred originally to Jenné in Mali)
• Dancers in drag, originally male prostitutes, whose dances were once much more sexualized than they are today