Tangier of the ‘forties and early ‘fifties was La Ville de Plaisir. ‘It was one of the charms of the International Zone that you could get anything you wanted if you paid for it. Do anything, too, for that matter – It was only a matter of price,’ wrote Paul Bowles. It was one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world and money was the lingua franca. The ‘Interzone’ was a Babel of tongues and intrigues. A place where spies and double agents plotted with thieves, and adventurers drank with millionaires and contrabandistas.

In 1942 Tangier boasted 13 mosques, 15 synagogues, 6 catholic churches and 3 protestant. But there were also more than a dozen European brothels and 15 Muslim brothels – workplaces for more than 300 girls.

Homosexuality was legal and several infamous boy-brothels made Tangier one of the most celebrated gay resorts in the world. Although prostitution, smuggling, gun running and loan sharking were big business, street crime was almost unheard of - simply because in such a small area the European-controlled police-force could put their hands on anyone in a matter of hours.

As befits one of the main meeting places of the old International Zone, the Petit Socco (small marketplace) is also known simultaneously in Spanish as Zoco Chico and in Arabic as Place Souk Dakhil. On the top edge of this cramped square is Café Tingis, the hangout of such literary vagabonds as Tennessee Williams, Ian Fleming, William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. But it was Paul Bowles (whose Tangier-inspired work includes The Sheltering Sky and Let it Come Down) who was the nucleus of the city’s writing set. Bowles arrived in Tangier with the intention of stopping over for a few weeks and has lived there for over fifty years.

The Petit Socco may have fallen from grace since the days of the International Zone but the medina itself is unchangeable. Lying largely within the casements of the 15th century Portuguese fortress, the labyrinthine alleyways and twisting stairways are more reminiscent of the corridors of an ancient, sprawling hotel than any western conception of a town.

One of the greatest joys of Tangier is simply to lose oneself in these corridors. To wander between mysterious pastel-painted walls that, to a ‘Nazrani’ (foreigner), give no clue to the mysterious lives behind the carved cedar doors.

In theory it should be a simple matter to enter the maze of the medina at the Petit Socco and, as long as you continue uphill, to arrive finally at the Kasbah. But over the centuries so many homes and shops have attached themselves to the old palace, like moss on an ancient tree, that it is effectively camouflaged to such an extent that you can walk almost all the way around it without realising.

The palace is now the Musée de la Kasbah, housing an impressive collection of Moroccan arts and antiques. The museum guardian will offer you the ubiquitous mint tea and you are free to sit under the fig trees in what was once the Sultan’s private garden and pass an hour in one of the most beautiful and historical places in Tangier.

A few years ago this garden was known to ‘old Tangier hands’ as one of the few places in the entire medina where you could escape the town’s hustlers.

The Barbary Corsairs who once plundered Christian ships in the Straits of Gibraltar were, in the twentieth century, replaced by the feared ‘Port Hustlers.’ Travellers from all over the world swapped horror stories about the hustlers of Tangier in awe-stricken voices.

But times have changed. Tangier has awoken to the benefits of tourism as illustrated by Marrakech and Fez and the tourist police have managed to do a sensitive and effective job of protecting the visitors. The unofficial guides still exist but, on your politely declining their assistance, they are now more likely to bid you a “Bienvenue, monsieur” than to dog your footsteps until you pay them off.

If you decide that you prefer to visit the medina with a guide it is advisable to hire one from the tourist office who - aside from being more knowledgeable - is less likely to try to drag you through a chain of craft stores.

Nothing in Tangier’s medina is sold at a fixed price. The vendors can recognise the exact figure that they can ask for any particular item merely by an instantaneous evaluation of the prospective customer’s appearance. There is one price for locals and another for tourists. One for tourists in groups and another for back-packers. There is a price for tourists who are passing through and another for those who are staying a few days, or weeks. And, of course, there is a price for a tourist who is accompanied by a guide.

Haggling is one of the social joys. It should always take place with smiles and is never to be hurried. The purchase of a treasured souvenir at a mutually acceptable price - arrived at over a glass or two of mint tea - leaves you with the memory of something far more human than a mere financial transaction.

‘Tangier is a foreign city if ever there was one,’ enthused Mark Twain, ‘and the true spirit of it can never be found in any book save the Arabian Nights.’

Wandering through the ancient medina you are continually faced with scenes that could have been torn directly from the pages of that book. But the spirit of Tangier cannot be summed-up so neatly. It does not lie in the Petit Socco of Bowles and Burroughs, or even with the Berber carpet-weavers in the old fondouk. Neither is it with the Riffian market-traders, by the Grand Socco, or in the café-lined Boulevard Pasteur, or with the Andalusian fishermen on Jews Beach. In truth, the spirit of Tangier is all these things and very much more.