mural-painting festival. Thursday is market day. The International Cultural Festival, held in August, features jazz and Moroccan music as well as art exhibitions. The festival is also the occasion for mural painting in which the medina's houses are painted with new murals every year. Many of the houses of Asilah feature mashrabiya (oriel windows). The main cultural center is the Centre Hassan II des Rencontres Internationales (housed in a former Spanish barracks), which hosts festivals in the summer. Due to its proximity to Spain, the cuisine in Asilah is described as Ibero-Moroccan with notable delicacies including paella, anchovies, and other seafood with both Moroccan and Valencian flavor influences. Notable landmarks The medina The old walled town (medina) of Asilah is well-preserved and dates mostly from the Portuguese occupation (15th-16th century) and afterwards. The medina has been heavily restored and its buildings are typically painted white, with occasionally blue or green, in addition to which can be found many of the murals created during the International Cultural Festival. Though the Portuguese rebuilt its outline of walls, it has the typical maze-like layout and alleys of an old Moroccan city. Walls and towers The walls of Asilah were first built by the Almohads and then restored and reinforced by the Marinids and the Wattasids. However, after the Portuguese took the city in 1471 they rebuilt the walls, making them more resistant to artillery, and modified the outline of the city, shrinking its perimeter for easier control. The current walls thus date almost entirely from the Portuguese occupation, with the possible exception of some parts of the seaside walls. There are two main gates in the walls, Bab Homar, in the mid-southern part of the walls, and Bab al-Qasaba, at the eastern end of the walls where the kasbah was once located. A rectangular tower in distinct Portuguese style, known as Borj al-Hamra ("Red Tower") or the Al-Qamra Tower, stands near the kasbah and overlooks an open square. Grand Mosque of Asilah The Grand Mosque of Asilah is located inside the former kasbah (citadel), at the eastern end of the medina. It was built under Moulay Ismail soon after the city was retaken for Morocco at the end of the 17th century. Moulay Ismail charged the new governor of Tangier, Ali ibn Abdallah Errifi, with building the mosque; however, it's possible that it was his son, Ahmed Errifi, who actually carried out the