In October 2025, Tangier officially joined UNESCO’s Creative Cities Network in the field of literature, becoming the first Moroccan city to receive this distinction. This honours Tangier’s long cultural legacy as a city at the crossroads of creativity, diversity, and intellectual life. The designation is the result of an institutional project led by the mayor’s office, which documented the city’s literary heritage and mobilised local cultural partners.
According to the Tangier municipality, this recognition honours the city’s rich cultural and literary heritage and its historical role as a focal point of creativity, openness, and diversity, as well as its active promotion of literary engagement. The distinction is the result of a comprehensive municipal project that preserved the city’s cultural memory, mapped its creative assets, and involved collaboration with local partners.
Tangier is known for attracting celebrated authors such as Jane and Paul Bowles, William S. Burroughs, and Tennessee Williams. The city also hosts major literary gatherings, including the Spring of Books and Arts, the Mediterranean Book Fair, and the Tangier International Poetry Festival. In addition, it is home to the prestigious Ibn Battuta Prize for Travel Literature, named after one of Morocco’s most famous scholars and explorers of the 14th century. Mohamed Choukri and Driss Ben Hamed Charhadi are among the city’s most celebrated local writers.
The designation places Tangier among the world’s 53 UNESCO Cities of Literature and more than 400 Creative Cities, opening new opportunities for cultural exchange, translation, publishing, and literary residencies. As a Creative City of Literature, Tangier is also committed to expanding literary access through mobile Literary Caravans, fostering education initiatives that connect young readers to global literature, and supporting its creative economy through digital publishing, local authors, book professionals and year-round residencies.
Read more: https://www.unesco.org/en/creative-cities/tangier