Mazagan Portuguese Fortress

The Portuguese fortified Mazagan from 1514 and rebuilt it from 1541 to the new Italian bastioned system - a low star-shaped trace with four angled bastions designed to eliminate blind ground and to resist cannon, which was cutting-edge military engineering at the time and is the reason UNESCO lists it as an early example of the design being exported outside Europe. It held until 1769, when the garrison withdrew and mined the walls; the town was resettled and the walls repaired. Inside are straight streets, the Manueline church of the Assumption, a mosque converted from a lighthouse tower, and the Portuguese cistern - an underground hall of about thirty-four metres square, its vaults on twenty-five pillars, with a shallow film of water on the floor that reflects the roof and a single shaft of daylight, which Orson Welles filmed in his Othello and which is the thing people come for.

What you actually see

• A bastioned trace of 1541 - early Italian-system fortification exported overseas.
• The cistern - a vaulted hall reflecting its own roof in a film of water.
• A Manueline church - Portuguese building inside the walls, with a converted lighthouse.
• Walkable ramparts - the full circuit above the town and the sea.

When to go

Spring and autumn; midday for the light shaft in the cistern. Half a day.

Honest expectations

The cistern is charged and queues when coaches arrive. The town inside the walls is ordinary and lived in. Some of the ramparts are in poor repair. El Jadida beaches are crowded in summer.

Nearby

Azemmour is north up the coast; Oualidia is south.