Exploring Rabat, Morocco – this year’s Unesco World Book Capital

Rabat is a gorgeous seaside city with great food and culture, but for book lovers there’s an added incentive to go this year

The first book I read willingly was Bridget Jones’s Diary. I was 19. Up to that point, I hadn’t been much of a reader. I’d been more into football, or Baywatch, or Robin Budd in the year above – anything really. Given the choice between reading a book and staring at a wall, I would have plumped for the latter.

After finishing my A-levels, I worked in a barbecue restaurant in Portsmouth – which is where I found Bridget Jones. The book was lying around in the staffroom. I picked it up and read a few pages, and then a few more, and then a few more. It felt exciting. Like I’d met someone. Like I was suddenly in a relationship. Over the next few days, I remember cancelling nights out so I could go to bed and read. My mum thought I was depressed.

It hardly matters what book gets you going. For Jeanette Winterson, it was the Book of Deuteronomy. For David Nicholls, it was Tales from Moominvalley. What matters is that a book gets you going. Throughout my 20s, I worked as a carer, but I was always reading and scribbling on the side. I became a published author seven years ago. It’s not an overstatement to say that Bridget Jones changed my life. That books did.

So when I learned that 2026 was National Year of Reading (a UK-wide campaign intended to promote the importance and joy of reading) and that Rabat was to be this year’s Unesco World Book Capital (a rotating designation intended to promote the importance and joy of reading), I packed a few volumes and set off for Morocco’s capital. I was hoping for a cultural adventure, and perhaps a tagine, in this ancient seaside city perched scenically between Casablanca and Tangier.

Rabat was made the capital of Morocco in 1912, at the beginning of the turbulent 44-year period when the country found itself under the thumb of the French. The first thing I saw of the city was the New Town, or Ville Nouvelle, which was laid out in the 1920s à la française, meaning it looks nothing like the huge medieval medina that’s just up the road.

From the central train station, I proceeded to the solar-powered Mohammed VI Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, where the permanent exhibition – Shifting Horizon(s) – does exactly what it says on the tin. Highlights include the abstract paintings of Mohamed Melehi and a provocative photograph by Lalla Essaydi. Part of a series called Bullet Revisited, the latter shows a woman covered head to toe in gold bullets, and is a powerful indictment of the violence women suffer.

I walked north to the medina, an irregular network of narrow streets lined with small shops flogging mint, slippers, strawberries and sabon beldi, a black soap made from the flesh and oil of olives. The medina was busy but calm. Not once was I asked to consider a carpet or sample a sardine. Indeed, I felt rather invisible. In this respect, the customer service was uncannily French.

I followed my nose to the Kasbah of the Oudayas, an enchanting district of low whitewashed houses. Built on high ground in view of the ocean, this former royal citadel was ideally placed to spot visitors on the horizon, and greet them appropriately.

After checking into a riad on Rue Bazou, I descended a flight of stone steps to the beach, a modest curve of sand where scores of people were playing football and volleyball. I crossed the cooling sand and climbed on to the breakwater to better observe a neon sun sink slowly seaward, as a lone surfer, way out in the offing, sought inch-perfect swell.

I took a pew at the beachside Relais Marin restaurant. I didn’t deliberate over the menu. Like casserole and paella, tagine is a dish in two senses; both the cooking vessel and the meal, on this occasion a confusion of lamb, almonds and prunes in a delicious gravy that, with time, had reduced to a bold, flavourful pesto, which I mopped up with chunks of khobz (Moroccan flatbread). I could have eaten another.

The next morning I went to the Cafe des Oudayas. Situated next to the Andalusian Gardens – a wonderful place full of orange and pomegranate trees – this alfresco cafe offers three things: mint tea, biscuits and an excellent vantage point.

As I eked out the tea, I watched a boy poised on the edge of a towering rock, 30 metres above the Bou Regreg river. Goaded by his friends, he meant to jump, but he hesitated for minutes in the intensifying sun. His dive, when it finally came, was a thing of beauty – a wide and graceful arc, shapely, immaculate, somewhat divine, almost unreal. The gallery held its breath until he re-emerged – to be met with disingenuous disdain. “La poule a attendu une éternité!” (The chicken waited for ever!) Lads, eh?

On a whim, I boarded an electric tuk-tuk, one of 60 in the city. I asked the driver to take me directly to the Chellah, a medieval necropolis that also houses what’s left of the Roman city of Sala Colonia, but, knowing best, the driver instead went out of his way to show off his home town, swinging by St Peter’s cathedral and a nightclub called Amnesia, where Morocco’s king is said to have boogied back when merely a prince.

The Chellah – when I finally got there – did not disappoint. After doing a round of the picturesque ruins, I climbed to a gorgeous onsite cafe and ordered the couscous. Befitting tradition, the dish comprised a pyramid of seven vegetables, a moat of couscous, a jug of broth and some meaty treasure hidden within the veg. It was unmistakably bon.

If one requires beer in Rabat, one heads to Le Dhow, a bar and restaurant on a boat moored in the shadow of the kasbah. Sitting on the upper deck, I savoured an ice-cold pint while chatting with a British undergraduate studying at the Université Internationale de Rabat. I asked if she felt comfortable in the city. “It’s been fine,” she said. “Some men have said hello. One asked for a photo. To be honest, I’ve experienced a lot worse in Worcester.”

I’m just going to come out and say this – don’t go to Rabat because it’s this year’s World Book Capital. Despite my best efforts, the exact nature of the 300-plus events the city is purportedly going to run during its year as WBC remain a mystery to me. Instead, go to Rabat because it’s an excellent city. C’est simple.

On my final evening, I chanced on a humble bookshop in the medina – Bouquiniste El Azizi. Of the hundreds of preloved books assembled in the diminutive space, a dozen or so were in English. Among them was Bridget Jones’s Diary. I picked it up and read a few pages – and then left it for someone else to stumble on, and perhaps break their duck with.

On leaving the shop, I noticed a sign: Les livres prennent soin de nous. Books take care of us. The sentiment strikes me as the right note to finish on.

Ben Aitken is the author of Shitty Breaks: A Celebration of Unsung Cities, £9.99. To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply