Lest you be left with the impression that the Casbah and medina are just for commerce, the above picture is of a little house in the Casbah. Space here is precious. While it's difficult to determine the scale from this picture, I would have to duck my head to get in the door.
During our visit to the medina, we made two stops that allowed us relief from the street vendors. The first was to a government-run arts and crafts building that displayed and sold work on consignment. We were taken here because one could not count on the goods sold by the small shops and street vendors would be as advertised. If you bought something that was sterling silver, you wanted to be sure that it was 92.5% silver. If you bought items that were indigenous to Morocco, you wanted to be sure they were not just knock-offs from the far east.
The building was like a three-floor warehouse. On the top floor there were Berber rugs and carpets about which we were given a lesson and demonstration by a middle-age man in a fez. He took a lighter to show that they were fire resistant and jumped on them to show that they wouldn't slip or slide.
But why was he showing us all these rugs? True, there were some small throws, but most of them would have to be shipped.
"Shipping? Ah, yes" he said with a hint of a smile. "That brings us to our three magic carpets. DHL, Fedex and UPS."