Module 022 · Generative Sensory Map
The Pulse of the Medina
Marrakech breathes. Watch it.
A medina is not a place. It is a rhythm. At 5am the adhan sounds from 186 minarets and the bakers light their ovens. By 10am the coppersmiths are hammering in polyrhythm and the spice merchants are measuring saffron on brass scales. By 2pm the heat empties the alleys. By 9pm Jemaa el-Fna is a bonfire of drums and storytelling and grilled meat. By midnight the cats inherit everything. This visualization renders that rhythm as a living organism — streets as pulsating threads, coloured by the craft that lives on them, thickening with the crowd. Drag the slider. Watch the city breathe.
10:00 AM
Peak craft activity
Activity
80%
Craft Quarters — colour = trade, brightness = activity at current hour
Tanneries
Bab Debbagh
Scraping hides, water sloshing
64% active
Coppersmiths
Souk Haddadine
Hammering copper, ringing metal
68% active
Zellige & Tile
Souk Smarine area
Chiseling tile, tapping geometry
56% active
Spices & Herbs
Rahba Kedima
Grinding, measuring, haggling
54% active
Textiles & Silk
Souk Semmarine
Loom clacking, fabric unrolling
25% active
Leather goods
Souk el-Kebir
Stitching, cutting, pressing
61% active
Woodwork & Cedar
Souk Chouari
Sawing, carving, sanding
56% active
Dyers
Souk Sebbaghine
Wringing, dripping, steaming
49% active
Gold & Jewellery
Souk Siyyaghin
Delicate tapping, scales clicking
12% active
Street performers
Jemaa el-Fna
Drums, stories, sizzling food
0% active
24-Hour Soundscape — what you hear at each hour
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Reading Notes
The Sound Map
You can navigate the medina with your eyes closed. The coppersmiths announce themselves with rhythmic hammer-on-metal a full street away. The tanneries announce themselves by smell. The textile souk whispers with loom clatter. By 10am, the hammering reaches its peak — 50+ smiths beating simultaneously, a polyrhythmic wall of sound that tourists mistake for construction. By 1pm it stops for prayer. By 6pm it stops for the day. The silence that follows is the medina exhaling.
The Two Peaks
The medina has two rhythms that rarely overlap. The daytime peak (9am–12pm) belongs to the artisans — craft, production, wholesale. The nighttime peak (8pm–10pm) belongs to Jemaa el-Fna — performance, food, spectacle. Between them is the trough of the afternoon heat (1pm–3pm), when even the cats sleep. During Ramadan, these rhythms invert: the daytime is quiet, the night explodes after iftar. The medina is the same streets, the same stones, but a different city depending on the hour.
The Five Pauses
Five times a day, the adhan sounds from 186 minarets. For a few minutes, the medina pauses. Not stops — pauses. The devout pray. Others use the moment to drink tea, rest, recalibrate. The hammering quiets. The haggling softens. Then it resumes. This five-beat rhythm — Fajr (dawn), Dhuhr (noon), Asr (afternoon), Maghrib (sunset), Isha (night) — is the medina's heartbeat. Not the clock. Not the tourist schedule. The adhan. It has been this way for 954 years and it will be this way tomorrow.
A thousand years of people walking the same stones have worn grooves into the marble thresholds of Souk Semmarine. The groove is deepest on the left side, because the souk turns right 40 metres ahead and everyone drifts left to prepare. The stone has memorised the crowd. The crowd has memorised the stone. This is what a data visualization of a medina should feel like — not a map you read, but a pulse you recognize.
Sources
Activity rhythms derived from Riad di Siena field observation (11 years, Laksour quarter), visitor flow surveys, and artisan workshop schedules. Sound mapping from direct observation of Souk Haddadine (coppersmiths), Souk Sebbaghine (dyers), Bab Debbagh tanneries. Prayer times from Ministry of Habous and Islamic Affairs. Jemaa el-Fna rhythm from UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage documentation. Quarter positions approximate — the medina is a tangle, not a grid. Thread generation is procedural; the patterns are representative of density and flow, not cartographically precise. All timestamps are typical non-Ramadan winter/spring day (sunrise ~6:30AM, sunset ~6:30PM).
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