Heritage & Culture

A tagine is the pot, not the dish. Moroccan cooking runs on slow braises, bread used as a utensil, and mint tea that arrives whether you asked for it or not.

UNESCO records Gnawa as beginning with people taken in the slave trade. Morocco is where the Sahara met the Atlantic, and its heritage list says so plainly.

Founded between 789 and 808 and inscribed in 1981, the Medina of Fez is a working city of some hundred thousand people, not an open air museum.

Founded in 1070 and inscribed in 1985, Marrakesh gave the country its name. Its medina covers 700 hectares and its square is inscribed in its own right.

A fortified earthen village on the road from the Sahara to Marrakesh, inscribed in 1987. Its communal buildings include a caravanserai and two cemeteries.

A fortified Atlantic port laid out on a European military plan in the 1760s, inscribed in 2001, and called by UNESCO the Port of Timbuktu.

A 42 hectare Roman town on the edge of the empire, inscribed in 1997, that was an Amazigh capital first and an Idrisid one last.

Madagascar was settled from Borneo and from East Africa, and Malagasy people were later enslaved and shipped across the same ocean. A double history.

Ancestors are present, fady are local and binding, and a good speech is an art form. How Malagasy society works, and how to be a guest in it.

Rice at every meal, an accompaniment beside it, and a chili paste on the side. What to eat in Madagascar and what the menu is telling you.

The rainforest most visitors to Madagascar actually see, three hours from the capital, and not one of the six components of the Atsinanana inscription.

Six rainforest parks along the eastern escarpment, inscribed in 2007, on the Danger List for fifteen years and removed from it in 2025.