The heady, jostling atmosphere of Tangier can be overwhelming without an insider's itinerary — from the best stall in the souk and the bookshop where locals love to read, to the newest palatial hotel and cosmopolitan club.
Life in Tangier is a heterogeneous affair. Like the city's jagged topography and dramatic site — perched on the northwest tip of Africa, on the steep hills and cliffs overlooking the Strait of Gibraltar — Tangier itself is a place of extreme contrasts: raging storms and balmy afternoons; modern, compact apartments and ancient cavernous palaces; mega-rich royals and dirt-poor beggars; bustling souks and laid-back beaches; sumptuous hotels and tawdry bars. A trip to Tangier is an eye-opening, mind-altering experience that will have you dodging the chaotic snarl of traffic between a crumbling, centuries-old shop filled with dusty pottery and a sleek new cafe packed with 20-somethings on Apple MacBook Pros.
This eccentric bit of Morocco is more understandable when you consider its rocky past: after some two dozen centuries of Phoenician, Carthaginian, Roman, Vandal, Byzantine, Arab, Portuguese, Spanish and British occupations, Tangier was declared an international zone in 1923. For the next 33 years (before Moroccan independence from France), Tangier was a petri-dish port for intercontinental trade, diplomacy, contraband, espionage and the hedonistically inclined artists, writers, poets and philosophers who reveled in its freewheeling polyglot ambience. Henri Matisse, William S. Burroughs, Jean Genet, Paul and Jane Bowles, Tennessee Williams, Patricia Highsmith and Allen Ginsberg were famously inspired by Tangier; so are the artistically inclined, often foreign residents who own some of the most stylish homes here today.
Witty, cultured and generally less self-destructive than their predecessors, Tangier's worldly set currently includes the French collector and philanthropist Pierre Bergé, the English antiques expert Christopher Gibbs, the Italian interior designer Roberto Peregalli, the French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy, the American director Rob Ashford, the French-Moroccan contemporary artist Yto Barrada, the British painter and illustrator Lawrence Mynott and his wife, the graphic designer Anthea Mynott, the French fashion designer Stephan Janson, the French shoe designer for Roger Vivier, Bruno Frisoni, and his partner, the French furniture designer Hervé Van der Straeten, the English photographer Tessa Codrington, the American garden designer Madison Cox, the French writer and bookseller Simon-Pierre Hamelin, and the Italian horticulturist and author Umberto Pasti. That's a heady melting pot in itself.
Despite a growing maze of clunky housing complexes rearing up around the city's periphery, central Tangier looks pretty much the way it did in the 1950s, but spiffier. Locals attribute downtown's neat parks, and the freshly patched sidewalks and roads, to the support and frequent presence of Morocco's King Mohammed VI, who stays in a huge palace compound up high in the Vieille Montagne (Old Mountain) neighborhood.
Many also believe that the restoration of Tangier's port, and the new and newly renovated hotels, restaurants, bookshops, cinemas and boutiques, are signs that the city may become a major North African resort. In the 1990s, the El Minzah Hotel — a 1930 Hispano-Moresque 140-room landmark — was the only four-star lodging in town. Today, the Hôtel Nord-Pinus Tanger, a renovated pasha's palace overlooking Tangier's old port, caters to picky fashion and film folk who reserve its six suites four months in advance. Up near the king's palace on the Vieille Montagne, the century-old Villa Joséphine, a former pasha's residence converted to a hotel in 2004, is evocative of a belle époque estate in Cap d'Antibes, France. The whitewashed villa is famous for its lush banks of hydrangea and geranium, an expansive swimming pool overlooking the Strait of Gibraltar, 10 posh rooms and dinners of grilled sea bass and Château Chasse-Spleen Bordeaux. It's an appealing spot for a tryst — but requires a very full wallet.
For breakfast, coffee and tea, there are dozens of cafe options in the Casbah and downtown, but for those who want to spot some of the significant Tangerines mentioned above, the 1920s Gran Cafe de Paris on the Place de France is ideal. Sit at a table on the pavement for people watching. A short walk away, on the Place du 9 Avril (previously called the Grand Socco), try to score an empty chair at the Wi-Fi-wired cafe in front of the Art Deco Cinéma Rif, restored and updated in 2006 by the artist Yto Barrada and the architect Jean-Marc Lalo. Barrada, an outspoken and energetic Louise Brooks look-alike, began running the Cinémathèque de Tanger there that year. Frequent screenings include North African and Arabian short features, European documentaries, artists' videos, and big-reel classics like "Casablanca" and "Rebecca."
Tangier's cultured aesthetes are particularly proud of the Librarie des Colonnes, a remarkably well-restored 64-year-old bookstore on the Boulevard Pasteur. Managed by the tall, affable and dapper Simon-Pierre Hamelin, this magnet for writers and readers stages lectures, readings, signings and exhibitions of works on paper. The emphasis is on quality literary fiction (available in four languages) and hard-to-find books on art, photography, decoration and architecture. The facade of the bookstore is painted a deep matte red, and the comfortable benches inside provide hours of inviting seating for reading and chatting. Handsome, handcrafted cedar shelves and tables add to the Librairie des Colonnes' senso-intello mood.
Over the 30 years I've been visiting Tangier, my all-time favorite dinner destination is the wide, arched veranda of the Casa d'Italia, in a former sultan's palace that later became the Palais des Institutions Italiennes. Tangerine insiders call it the "Italian Club," and that's exactly how it feels: loud, casual and filled with table-hopping diners and waiters who have known each other forever. Locals get preferred seating over tourists, but everyone orders the thin pizza and the fried shellfish medley — welcome alternatives to the otherwise ubiquitous couscous. For a splashier atmosphere (and a bona fide piano bar, which is hard to come by in this town), there's the new El Morocco Club, steps away from the late Yves Saint Laurent's former Villa Mabrouka, now occupied by the theater director Rob Ashford. The three-story restaurant's slick décor, inspired by the legendary El Morocco nightclub in New York, features a tented rooftop terrace and walls hung with signed photos by Tessa Codrington and Mario Testino; a jet-set crowd pecks at dishes like a prawn, mango and pink grapefruit salad off a cosmopolitan menu.
Tangier has more than its share of "antiques" shops selling lots of stuff you can buy anywhere else in Morocco — pottery tagines, silver and "amber" necklaces, camel saddles, tin lanterns — but there's one spot that specializes in high-quality, one-of-a-kind antiques. Deep in the entrails of the medina, Boutique Majid, opened in 1970 by Abdelmajid Rais El Fenni, is a source of unusual furniture, decorative objects, architectural remnants, ceramics, carpets and clothing. Illuminated by huge skylights, the shop stretches upward through several levels, crowned with a rooftop terrace and panoramic view. Visiting fashionistas and decorators spend hours rummaging through Majid's large collection of antique North African textiles. The jewelry is good too — and pricey. In fact, so are most of the items here, but you're paying for Mr. Rais El Fenni's discerning eye, scrupulous editing and attentive company.
Visitors to Tangier's private homes will see that the décor and gardens tend to be a little looser and softer and much more Eurocentric than those found elsewhere in North Africa. That's not to say that Tangerines don't cover their pillows in embroidered textiles from Fez — or plant citrus trees in their gardens — but you won't be exposed to quite so many multicolored Berber rugs, fancy carved plaster arches, ornate stained-glass lanterns, and fountains clad in blazing blue patterned tiles as you would in Marrakesh or Casablanca. The loveliest homes look continental and wind-swept fresh: lots of whitewashed walls, comfortable deep sofas and wing chairs upholstered in solids or stripes, cotton curtains and matchstick shades, pretty pastel china and unembellished wood, iron and wicker outdoor furniture.
Pierre Bergé's sophisticated urban garden at the Villa Léon l'Africain was designed by the Tangier resident Madison Cox, who eschewed more typical Moroccan landscape aesthetics for inspiration from the sets of Joseph L. Mankiewicz's 1959 film, "Suddenly, Last Summer." Romantic, full and animated with tree ferns, clivia, water papyrus and caladage pebble paving, Bergé's urban refuge is a sophisticated, poetic response to the local palm-tree-and-rosebush school of garden design.
Across town at Anthea and Lawrence Mynott's whimsical rooftop apartment, daring decorative touches reflecting the couple's European heritage are on joyful display. There is little that's typical or predictable about the Mynotts, and chez Mynott there are no fussy tiles or camel saddles, but there is a chair shaped like a swan: designed by Cecil Beaton in the 1950s, it looks right at home with a whopper of an Austrian Rococo cabinet, trellis-themed French Zuber wallpaper, gobs of chinoiserie trim, an English tea service that belonged to Stephen Tennant and a plaster bust of Madame du Barry, a mistress of Louis XV. The dining room is done up with corals, porcelain fruits, shells, botanical prints, a Venetian chandelier and a Chinese wicker container in the shape of a Pekingese pup. And the walls themselves make the perfect punctuation to this madcap cultural mash-up that defines Tangier today: they are painted Schiaparelli shocking pink. Of course.
Anda sedang membaca artikel tentang
T Magazine: Travel Diary | The Modern-Day Melting Pot of Tangier
Dengan url
http://travelwisatawan.blogspot.com/2013/12/t-magazine-travel-diary-modern-day.html
Anda boleh menyebar luaskannya atau mengcopy paste-nya
T Magazine: Travel Diary | The Modern-Day Melting Pot of Tangier
namun jangan lupa untuk meletakkan link
T Magazine: Travel Diary | The Modern-Day Melting Pot of Tangier
sebagai sumbernya
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar