Tangier has a hugely multicultural society, predominantly Muslim, but with small Christian, and Jewish communities. Over the years Tangier has attracted famous writers including Paul Bowles, Tennessee Williams and Truman Capote. Beat writers who visited or lived here include Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and Brion Gysin, who was also a painter. Notable artists who lived and painted here were Eugene Delacroix and Henri Matisse.Celebrities who have stayed in Tangier include The Rolling Stones, who also recorded with the Master Musicians of Jajouka and Bachir Attar in the kasbah in 1989. Tangier was a favorite home to Woolworth heiress Barbara Hutton, whose lavish parties at Sidi Hosni put Tangier on the map in the international press during from the 1950s through the early 1970s. Forbes magazine publisher Malcolm Forbes held his 70th birthday party in 1989 at his Palais Mendoub for 800 guests, flown in from all over the word, spending over $2.5 million in a week-end celebration.
Tangier seems to have attracted writers. Paul Bowles first visited the city in 1931 and moved there permanently in 1947, remaining until his death in 1999. He wrote his famous novel The Sheltering Sky in Morocco. In 1954 beat writer William S. Burroughs arrived and wrote the Naked Lunch, which alludes to this city. William Ginsberg, another beat writer, also arrived in 1954 with his friend Peter Orlovsky, and again in 1961 along with Jack Kerouac and Gregory Corso, staying at the Muniria. Writers Gavin Lambert, Gavin Young and Tahar Ben Jelloun also have writen and lived here at various times. Perhaps the most famous Moroccan author was Mohamed Choukri to live in the city was Mohamed Choukri, best known for his controversial and candid aubobiography For Bread Alone. Paul Bowles collaborated with Choukri on the translation and he wrote the introduction.
Tangier Health & Safety
Safety should be a concern if you are traveling alone or arriving at night. If you are taking a ferry over from Spain, you will be pressured into getting a "guide" to show you around the city. Be warned that you will most likely be given a little tour but then taken to a "School of Rugmaking" where you'll be pressured into purchasing overpriced rugs/blankets. Ideally, you should have a map of the city before you arrive along with accommodations and arrangements on how to get to them.
Don't feel pressured into getting a guide. If you get one, be prepared to a quick stroll pointing to "this house is from an Italian artist that bought it for X thousand Euros", that one is where Paul Bowles lived, my grandfather was the gate keeper of the Kasbah, blah, blah", all stories that only by accident will be true. Then you'll be asked some money to help his family, "anything you feel it's fair", but don't think they will be happy with just 20 or 30 Dirham for a 15 min. "tour". Perhaps worse is when the tour is bigger or they try to take you to their friends' shops, which happens more frequently than not.
If your concern is safety and you feel that your attention may be not enough, or you simply like to have guidance, try to get an official guide. They exist, in theory, and they can be easily identified because they have some badges or id. cards and must be dressed in c"jellabas". And you can allways ask at the hotels, tourism information offices and travel agencies. As almost everywhere, safety is hardly measured, as one's bad experience can have been only "bad luck" in the most peaceful place on Earth and there are situations where everybody you know that went to place that is famous for its crime rate had no problems. To make thing even more complicated, you have places where the crime rate is high but tourists are rarely involved and the contrary - relatively peaceful places where there is much pitty theft targeting tourists, so the actual numbers on crime and theft, if they exist also don't help much on clarifying the situation.
