Palais Zahia is a charming hotel, located in one of the oldest districts of the Tangier Medina "Petit Socco", made up of a large number of specific neighborhoods, gathering a diversity of ethnic groups, cultures, traditions, religions and civilizations: Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Berber civilization, English-speaking Muslim, French-speaking, Roman, Catalan, Greek, ...
Petit Socco is one of the oldest places frequented and inhabited in Tangier by artists, intellectuals, poets, painters, filmmakers. Businessmen, politicians, spies rubbed shoulders. Places of worship are many: mosques, 17 Synagogues and more 7 churches. It is the very symbol of tolerance and peaceful cohabitation. A very varied architecture is implanted there: Moorish art, Arabo-Muslim, Christian, 2500 m of walls, towers, portals, arcades ...
Several Jews (18000) maintained exchange offices there because the place had an international character, and counted more than fifty banks, which required the exchange of currencies of different countries represented in this world meeting place. The Jews marketed gold, valuable jewelery, fabrics and other imported food products such as sugar, oil, tea, at the time of Sultan Moulay Abdelaziz.