History & Architecture · Kasbah
El Badi Palace
The palace with only its walls left, and that's still enough
About the place
Ahmed al-Mansour built it after 1578 with the gold and ransoms of the Battle of the Three Kings: 360 rooms, Carrara marble traded weight for weight against sugar, onyx, columns covered in gold. It took twenty-five years. A century later Moulay Ismail spent ten years dismantling it to decorate Meknes. What's left is the immense courtyard, the 90-metre pool, the four sunken gardens of orange trees, and the storks nesting on the walls; you hear them clacking their beaks from the entrance. In a separate room sits the minbar of the Koutoubia, made in Córdoba around 1137: a thousand pieces of inlaid wood, the most beautiful object in the city.
Don't miss
- 0190-metre central pool
- 02Sunken gardens planted with orange trees
- 03Koutoubia minbar (12th century)
- 04Terrace overlooking storks and the Atlas
Visiting tip
Pay the 10 dirhams for the minbar, it's worth it. Then climb the terrace above the entrance for the storks and the Atlas; late afternoon the walls turn almost red.
Location
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