Harbor cities usually display the amalgamation of two, though entwined, urban systems: an open public space for the exchange of traded goods – usually a market or piazza located next to, or at, the port – and a protected and defensive architectural set of buildings attuned to the contemporary technologies of war. It is the collision of two vectors: one which promotes the freedom of movement and of social mingling and the other which stages the presence of control, surveillance and the power to protect through display of fortified and armored architecture.

In this short paper I would like to discuss several Portuguese footholds along the Atlantic coast of Morocco, in which the Moroccan harbor cities were transformed into military strongholds for securing maritime trade. I argue that these cities went through a sudden transition of turning harbor cities into military strongholds. I also suggest that this specific change involves the reverse of the gaze, in which the guarding ‘eyes’ of the harbor city was set over the open sea. Thus, the Imperial Portuguese project of building strongholds along the African coast caused a rupture in the architectural urban history of the Moroccan port cities and situated these spaces as part of the global display of Portuguese power along the expanded empire’s frontiers.

This talk will be Live Streamed via YouTube, @KUArtHistory.