“Asilah… land of encounters and dialogue”: Morocco’s coastal city opens the autumn session of the 47th International Cultural Moussem

The coastal city of Asilah in northern Morocco has once again become a living canvas: the autumn session of the 47th edition of the International Cultural Moussem opened on October 2 and will continue until October 18, gathering more than 400 participants from the worlds of culture, diplomacy, media, literature and the arts, as Morocco World News announces.

This year’s theme, “Asilah… land of encounters and dialogue”, sums up what has made the festival special for almost half a century: art does not stay shut behind gallery doors, but takes over the city itself. The Moussem was born in 1978 from Moroccan artist Mohamed Melehi and politician Mohamed Benaïssa, with the help of art critic Toni Maraini and the Al Muhit cultural association. At that time Asilah’s medina was in ruin; the organisers invited artists to work directly on the city’s walls, residents joined in, the streets became exhibition spaces — and that idea turned into the city’s hallmark.

The tradition continues today: murals regularly transform the white walls of the medina, offering visitors an open gallery that constantly changes. During the summer part of the 2026 Moussem alone, 15 artists from Morocco, Syria, Spain and Belgium took part in the mural painting workshop.

The autumn session moves beyond the murals into bigger conversations. The programme began with a two-day conference on the challenges of energy and water in Africa, while discussions on the Arab world towards 2030 are also on the programme. On October 5 and 6 the festival honours historian and art critic Toni Maraini, whose relationship with modern Moroccan art begins with the Casablanca art school and the first years of Asilah’s cultural experiment.

Attention is also devoted to authors: on October 13 the “Tent of Creativity” is dedicated to writer M’barek Rabi, while on October 15 comes the tribute to Tunisian author Hassouna Mosbahi. Poetry takes the stage towards the end of the programme — the fourth poetic meeting is held on October 16, followed a day later by the eighth “Buland Al-Haidari” prize for young Arab poets. Exhibitions, book presentations, music, graphics, painting, lithography and creative workshops for children complete the programme.

This mix makes Asilah’s Moussem hard to reduce to a single category: it is partly an art festival, partly a literary gathering, partly an intellectual forum and partly a nearly five-decade experiment in what happens when culture becomes part of a city’s physical identity. Almost 50 years after artists first began painting its walls, Asilah continues to offer the same proposition: culture does not have to stay inside a museum — sometimes, a whole city can become a canvas.