Why is Marrakech red and Chefchaouen blue?

Marrakech sits on a plain of iron-rich alluvial clay called pisé. The Almoravids who founded the city in 1062 built from rammed pisé walls. The Almohads, who replaced them, used pisé too. By the time the Saadian dynasty built the Bahia and Badi palaces in the 1500s, the ochre-red colour was already the city's signature. In 1971, a municipal decree formalised it: any new building in the medina must be painted in marrakshi rose, the specific ochre tone of the city's clay. The decree is still enforced.

Chefchaouen is more recent and more contested. The town was founded in 1471 by Andalusi refugees, but the blue dates only to the 20th century. Three competing explanations: (1) the local Jewish community, expanding in the 1930s, painted in blue to reflect the divine sky, following a Sephardic tradition that travelled with them from Spain. (2) The blue was added in the 1970s to attract tourists, a deliberate municipal makeover. (3) Local elders say it has always been blue and the date doesn't matter. The Jewish-origin theory has the most evidence — community photographs from the 1940s already show blue walls — but the tourism boost is real and ongoing.

Other coded cities: Fes is sand-white with green-tiled minarets, Tangier is white-washed against Atlantic light, Asilah is repainted in murals every summer for its festival. The red and the blue are not folklore. They are policy.