Larache

Larache lies on the Atlantic coast at the mouth of the Loukkos.¹ The fishing port is 90 kilometres south of Tangier on the left bank of the river, about 750 metres from its mouth.² The town belongs to the province of the same name in the Tangier-Tetouan-Al Hoceima region.³ The walled old town rises in terraces towards two fortresses that overlook it to the north and south; the old Kebibat fortress rises from the sea.⁴

At the 2024 census Larache had 133,731 inhabitants, compared with 125,008 in 2014; Larache province had a total of 510,211 people in 2024.⁵ In 1986 the geographer Jean-François Troin gave Larache’s population as 63,893 and described the town and Ksar el-Kebir, 36 kilometres away, as an urban pair; Larache had just become the capital of a new province at the time.⁶

At the mouth of the Loukkos, opposite the present-day town, lies the ancient city of Lixus.⁷ According to the excavations, the site was inhabited from the 8th century BC until the 14th century; the layers range from the Phoenician, Punic, Mauretanian and Roman periods to Islamic times. Excavations have uncovered a temple quarter, residential quarters from pre-Roman and Roman times and a large complex for salting fish. The Ministry of Culture submitted Lixus for the World Heritage Tentative List on 1 July 1995.⁸

According to Pliny the Elder, the Emperor Claudius founded a Roman colony at Lixus.⁹ From the Roman period date a theatre-amphitheatre whose arena, at 804 square metres, is among the largest of its type, and an industrial quarter where garum, preserved fish and salt were produced.¹⁰ In 2022 a Moroccan-Spanish mission of INSAP and the University of Cádiz resumed excavations in this quarter as part of a four-year programme; at that point ten factories with 150 vats were known.¹¹

Around AD 285 the southern frontier of the province of Mauretania Tingitana was pulled back to the Loukkos; Lixus remained under Roman administration and was given a smaller town wall in the 4th century.¹² A small apsed building in the temple quarter, formerly interpreted as a church, is more likely a mosque according to the archaeologist Aomar Akerraz. Arabic texts call the place Tashommes; the name Loukkos remained with the river.¹³

The Ministry of Culture announced that the site would open to visitors in April 2019 after restoration work. Ten million dirhams were earmarked for the enclosure and a heritage interpretation centre; with the Italian embassy, the development agency AICS and the University of Siena, storerooms for finds, a conference hall and a reception area were built.¹⁴

Larache was under Spanish administration from 1610 to 1689 and from 1912 to 1956.¹⁵ In 1912 a harbour basin was built on the left bank of the Loukkos and served as a commercial port; in 1924 a 180-metre fishing quay with a water depth of 4.5 metres was added. Today the port has 45 hectares of land, 20 hectares of water and 1,138 metres of quays, and the port authority lists it as the second fishing port of the region.¹⁶

On the lower course of the Loukkos lies the Complexe du bas Loukkos, a Ramsar site of 6,630 hectares since 15 January 2005: estuarine waters, salt flats, saltworks, freshwater marshes and floodplains, surrounded by irrigated farmland with rice fields. The information sheet lists, among others, the Eurasian otter, European eel, marbled duck, purple heron and red-knobbed coot.¹⁷ In 1986 Troin described the Loukkos plain as the most dynamic agricultural area of the north, with sugar beet, sugar cane, tea, citrus fruit and food-processing plants in the new irrigation area.¹⁸

On 5 June 2017 the writer Juan Goytisolo was buried in the Marine Cemetery of Larache, next to the French poet and playwright Jean Genet.¹⁹ Abdelmalek Essaâdi University runs a Faculté polydisciplinaire in the town.²⁰ The Larache junction is on the motorway from the port of Tanger Med to Rabat, whose section from Kenitra to Larache has been open since 26 June 1996.²¹

At the Larache weather station, 47 metres above sea level, mean daily maximum temperatures rise from 16.7 °C in January to 28.7 °C in August. Of 700.5 millimetres of annual precipitation, an average of 0.8 millimetres falls in July and 129.1 millimetres in November (WMO climate normals 1991–2020).²²