Yves Saint Laurent, one of the legendary names of the world of fashion, died Sunday evening in Paris at the age of 71. His connections with Morocco were so strong that his ashes will be kept in a tomb in the Majorelle botanical gardens, a property he acquired in Marrakech in the 1980’s.Yves Saint Laurent first visited Marrakech in 1967 and several years later he and his businessman friend, Pierre Bergé, bought the house of gardens which once belonged to the painter Jacques Majorelle .
In March 2000, they decided to restore the garden and four years later started an association to save protect and beautify the Majorelle gardens “"l’Association pour la sauvegarde et le rayonnement du jardin Majorelle".
Yves Saint Laurent’s last visit to Marrakech was in November 2006 when he spent his summer vacations in Tanger situated in the north of Morocco, where he owned another property.
500k-year-old human fossil discovered in CasablancaAccording to a press release from the Culture ministry, the fossil belongs to a variety called Homo Mauritanicus. It was found associated with stone tools and many animal vestiges: gazelles, antelopes, warthogs, bears, monkeys, rhinoceroses…etc.
This scientific discovery was achieved by a Moroccan-French team from the "Institut national des sciences de l'archéologie et du patrimoine" (INSAP) and the National Center of Scientific Research (University of Bordeaux I, France).
Thomas I quarry is one of the most important sites for research into the early populations of northwest Africa.
Late Friday night, A Moroccan in Washington D.C. broke the news that YouTube had been blocked in Morocco. He remarked that “It's quite saddening to see such a thing happening in Morocco;a country that has made giant steps in freedoms and socio-economic reforms in the span of short 8 years.” - Jillian York, Global Voices.
Houses for sale in the Fez Medina
A new trend is emerging in Fez, with several house owners putting renovated properties on the market. Although the overwhelming majority of sales are of unrenovated houses, there is obviously a secondary market emerging.
One seller we talked to said that it was not a matter of losing interest in Fez, but rather that he wanted to diversify and that after running a guest house for a year or so he had decided that it was not the lifestyle he wanted. It is expected that renovated houses will sell quickly and at considerable profit.
In other areas of Morocco new property investment continues to boom - for example, the release of a development of two and three bedroom town houses, located between Morocco's Atlantic seafront and an area of outstanding natural forest.
The complex is called Emaar Tinja, and is already causing quite a stir amongst investors. This is partly due to continuing commitment from the Moroccan authorities, according to Propertyshowrooms.com Product Acquisition Manager Mark Wilson:
"This area of Morocco comes firmly endorsed by the government through its intent to propel the nation's tourism figures to 10 million per annum by 2010. Emaar Tinja will indeed be a magnet for the influx of new overseas buyers seeking luxury homes within easy access of Tangier and the coast."
Tahir Shah's new book.
The new book by Tahir Shah is out. Titled - In Arabian Nights: In Search of Morocco through its Stories and Storytellers it is published by Doubleday (£11.99). Thankfully it has a little more depth than the shallow and at times annoying The Caliph's House which offered much but delivered little. It should be noted thought that readers of The Caliph's House who did not know Morocco found it very entertaining.
The new book is again a light yarn but takes the reader out around Morocco on a week long quest that provides the framework for the retelling of local stories and glimpses of life in Morocco. We will be interested in what our readers think of it.
And while on books...
Guide books about Fez and Morocco.
Fodor's Travel Guides (www.fodors.com), a division of Random House Publishing, is seeking a freelance writer to update an upcoming edition of Morocco.
Top candidates would be published writers living full- or part-time in Morocco. However, they will consider new writers who are extremely well-connected to the country. Candidates must be fluent in English with strong French skills.
If interested, please contact Random House with resume, two writing clips, and be prepared to complete a short writing test.
Be warned!Recently Thomas Cook tried to employ local people to write a guide book about Fez, but the money on offer and the conditions showed they had not the faintest clue about how long it takes to write a good travel guide. They also did not offer an advance as is normal in publishing contracts and were suggesting that photgraphs would not be paid for.
Our suggestion is that you stick with Fez Encounter & Lonely Planet.
Fes Sacred Music Festival rumblings...
With the Festival due to get underway in a few days, it was disturbing to hear from a Moroccan insider that all is not well in the publicity and PR department. our source says that he has heard of at least two people so unhappy with the Festival's lack of organisation that they wanted to resign. Hopefully saner and calmer heads will rule and things will quieten down. The Festival organisers have never really understood the power and value of good publicity and once again the press are being restricted in their photographic access to a few minutes at the beginning of an act. We rang the festival to discuss this but our call was not returned. It is to be hoped that this year the organisers realise this is not simply a social event for the self-styled elite - but a serious music festival of world standing and if you are on the world stage it would be a good idea to act accordingly.
For the full programme of the festival check here: Fez Festival
Tags: Moroccan Morocco Fes, Maghreb news
1 comment:
That story about YouTube is from over a year ago - somehow it keeps popping back up on new blogs, but the original story on Global Voices is from 2007. YouTube was blocked for a time, by Vivendi International, Maroc Telecom's parent company, presumably because of a video which insulted the royal family (though that has never been confirmed).
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