Jemaa el-Fnaa

Where it sits. Jemaa el-Fnaa is the great open square at the heart of the Marrakesh medina, immediately east of the Kutubiyya Mosque and immediately south of the entrance to the souks. It is not a designed piazza with matching facades; it is an irregular space, roughly the size of several football pitches, hemmed by low cafes with roof terraces on the north and east sides and opening toward the mosque on the west. The Kutubiyya minaret, 77 metres of ochre stone begun in 1147, is visible from almost anywhere on it and is the landmark that keeps you oriented once the souks have swallowed your sense of direction.

The story behind it. Marrakesh was founded by the Almoravids in 1070, and the square began as the open ground in front of the Ksar el-Hajjar, the stone fortress that stood just north of the present Kutubiyya. Early sources call it Rahbat al-Ksar, the place of the fortress, or simply the great square. The Almoravid emir Ali ibn Yusuf added a palace beside it with a monumental gate facing the open space, where the ruler could sit in public and dispense justice, and from then on the ground served for markets, parades, festivals and executions. The name is disputed. The most credible explanation ties it to the Saadian sultan Ahmad al-Mansur, who began a monumental Friday mosque in the middle of the square in the late 16th century and abandoned it, probably during outbreaks of plague; the ruin gave the square a name that can be read as the mosque of annihilation. UNESCO proclaimed the square's oral traditions a Masterpiece of the Intangible Heritage of Humanity in 2001, one of the first places on earth to be listed for a performance culture rather than a building.

On screen. The square's most consequential screen appearance is also one of its oldest. Alfred Hitchcock filmed The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) in Marrakesh with James Stewart and Doris Day, using the market square and the city's streets for the sequence in which a dying man in Berber disguise stumbles into the couple and passes on a secret. Day's twelve-year-old son travelled with her to the location. Marrakesh has been a working film city ever since: Hideous Kinky (1998) with Kate Winslet was shot largely here, the medina and its riads have stood in for half a dozen other Arab cities, and Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation closed the Marrakesh stadium for filming on 8 and 9 September 2014 during its Moroccan block. The country's studio infrastructure at Ouarzazate, four hours over the Atlas passes, is why so many productions base themselves in this city.

What actually happens there. The square runs on a daily cycle. Mornings are relatively empty: orange juice carts, a few water sellers in fringed red hats and brass cups, and the last of the night's rubbish being swept. From mid-afternoon the halqa forms, the circle of spectators around a performer, and this is the tradition UNESCO listed. You will find storytellers working in Darija, Gnawa musicians with metal qraqeb castanets and three-string guembris, acrobats from the Amazigh villages of the Souss, herbalists, tooth-pullers with trays of extracted molars, henna artists and snake charmers whose cobras are best given a wide berth. At dusk, dozens of numbered food stalls are wheeled in and assembled within about twenty minutes, and the square turns into a single enormous open-air canteen serving harira soup, grilled brochettes, snail broth in small bowls and sheep's head.

How to handle it. Everything on the square is transactional, and that is not a scandal, it is the deal. Photographing a performer, a monkey handler or a snake charmer incurs a fee; agree it first, in dirhams, or simply do not take the picture. The rooftop terraces of the Cafe de France and Le Grand Balcon charge the price of a mint tea for the elevated view that appears in every photograph of the square, and the best light is the twenty minutes after sunset, when the food stall smoke catches the last of the sky. Pickpocketing is the main risk in the crush after dark; motorbikes cut through the edges at speed at all hours.

Getting there and timing. Marrakesh Menara Airport is fifteen minutes away by taxi, and trains from Casablanca take around three hours. The square is closed to cars, and taxis stop at its edges. October to April is the comfortable season, with warm days and cold nights; the Marrakesh winter sun is superb for photography. July and August regularly exceed 40 degrees, and the square is effectively unusable until early evening. During Ramadan the food stalls open only after sunset, when the square fills with an intensity it never reaches at other times of year.