Jemaa el-Fnaa is a square and market place in Marrakesh’s medina quarter. It remains the main square of Marrakesh, used by locals and tourists.
There is nowhere in Morocco like the Jemaa el Fna Square – no place that so easily involves you and allows you to stay coming back for more. By day, most of the place is just a large open space, where a handful of snakes charming bewitched their cobras with flutes, medical men (especially in the north-east of the square) display cures and Panaceous, and tooth-pullers, wielding fearsome claws, offering to wrest pain from the heads of people suffering from toothache, trays of extracts attesting molars their skills.
It ‘s only in the afternoon that the square really happens. At dusk, as in France and Spain, people go out for a walk early evening (especially in the street Bab Agnaou), and the place fills up little by little until it becomes a carnival all of storytellers, Acrobats, musicians and artists. Go down and you will soon be immersed in the ritual: wandering around, crouching in the midst of spectator circles, giving a dirham or two as your contribution. If you want a break, you can walk to the rooftop terraces, such as the Grand Balcon Café, for a view of the square, its storytellers and musicians, and the crowds that come to see them.
As a stranger in Jemâa, you may feel something of an intruder. Most of the crowd are Moroccans of course (some foreigners, for example, will understand the tales of storytellers), but tourists also make a significant contribution to both the atmosphere and cash flow. Sometimes a storyteller or musician can take you to participate or contribute generously to the end of show collection and, entering the show, it is best to go bare of the usual tourist outlines such as watches, Belts of money or too much money; Pickpockets and crooks work (which gives a “present” and demanding payment as it is an old scam to be wary of, asking tourists to change counterfeit euro coins is a newer version). The crowd around the artists are Sometimes used as an opportunity to fumble foreign women, and by Moroccan men and male homosexual tourists for the cruise.
Tourist attractions include hoop bottle games, fortune tellers sitting under umbrellas with packs of divinatory cards at the ready and women with piping bags full of henna paste, ready to paint hands, feet or arms With “tattoos” that will last up to three months, beware of “synthetic black henna”, which contains a toxic chemical; That the red henna is natural (the Henné Café guarantees to use only the natural henna).
