Jemaa el-Fna: Assembly of the Dead

You're in Jemaa el-Fna, the beating heart of Marrakech. By day there are juice sellers, water carriers in colourful hats and snake charmers; at dusk come the musicians, fortune-tellers and storytellers who gather circles of listeners, the halqas.

1A name with many readings

Jemaa can mean 'mosque' or 'assembly', and fna is linked to the idea of destruction or an empty space. One widely quoted explanation holds that the Saadian sultan Ahmad al-Mansur began a mosque here in the late 16th century that was never finished, perhaps because of a plague epidemic; the chronicler as-Sa'idi ironically called it the 'mosque of ruin'.

The most famous translation, 'assembly of the dead', is linked to the public executions that, according to tradition, took place in the square. It's an evocative reading, but specialists don't agree on it.

2Heritage you can't touch

In 2001 UNESCO proclaimed the cultural space of the square a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity. The writer Juan Goytisolo, who lived in the medina, was one of its great champions. The square has also seen documented tragedies: in 1864 a gunpowder explosion killed some 300 people, and in 2011 a bomb attack on a café claimed 17 lives.

What is protected here isn't a building, but the voices of the storytellers.

3What to look for

• The storytellers' circles as evening falls.
• The water carriers, with their brass cups.
• The herbalists' stalls selling remedies and amulets.