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Charming cafes and patisseries are popping up. Three new museums have opened in the Kasbah. Tangier has never looked so beautiful." The heady days of Paul Bowles, the Rolling Stones, Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé, and assorted exiles are long gone. More lasting influences began when legendary antique dealers and designers — Londoners Christopher Gibbs, Robert Kime, and Veere Grenney, the Colefax & Fowler gang, and a dizzy list of chic French designers (Bruno Frisoni, Hervé Van Der Straeten) — descended on Tangier, set up residences, and left their Moroccan-inflected mark. Sultanate palaces, colonial villas, and former embassies are turned into boltholes and hotels. Now there's a boast that every other visitor/resident is an interior designer. Tangier has a noble history to draw upon. After the indigenous Berbers, the region became a Phoenician trading post in the 1st millennium BC. It later became a Carthaginian settlement and was subsequently ruled by the Phoenicians, Romans, Arabs, Portuguese, the British, and, memorably, the French. In the Souk and in the Medina, polyglot voices float through the jasmine- scented air. "Tangier, surrounded by my friends and the lively world of Moroccan creatives, is where I feel my happiest," said Deniot. "Tangier means freedom. I've been coming here for almost two decades and I still have much of the region to discover. In the meantime, I'm exploring every inch of Tangier. Every day is an inspiration." Photos this page: Bruno Frisoni and Herve Van Der Straeten's home, Dar Baba. From the book Inside Tangier, Vendome Press. Photographs Guido Taroni. (Continued) 28