The city of Taroudant looks large and enticing. As we enter the city, I see miles of adobe walls enclosing the old Medina. The entire area looks relatively untouched by modern man. This is a good thing.
Fortified walls of Taroudant
People tell me that in these mountains, this city stands out as unique because the French usually built a newer city alongside the traditional one during their long colonial reign. In Taroudant, this was not the case. The city retains its traditional feel, the best of which is the historic, well-preserved red mud/straw walls surrounding the city.
Thomas Lawrence, soldier and archaeologist, served in Saudi Arabia during WWI as a liaison between the British government and the Arab tribes. Such reality never gets in the way of location shooting when it comes to movies. Those gorgeous desert vistas seen in the movie Lawrence of Arabia lay in Jordan and here in Morocco.
We visit the sand and village where filming occurred some 62 years ago. By now, I’m sure all the camels, like Lawrence, have gone to the big movie studio in the sky.
