Day 5 Palaces and Tombs

Now the days are lovely and sunny, we've been able to have breakfast up on the rooftop terrace. It amazed us each morning how quiet it was up there. Despite being in the very heart of the city, with motorbikes roaring around the alleyways, people constantly on the move and activity all around, the only things we heard from the terrace were birds, including roosters, plus the muezzin from time to time. Amazingly, never the sound of traffic or people.

After a leisurely start to the day we set off to see two palaces and some tombs. We have delighted in the myriad of mosaics, plasterwork, filigree, ironwork and so on, but typically this is visible only in the noble houses and other significant buildings. We were surprised that the facades of ordinary buildings in the medina were, on-the-whole, pretty rumpty and plain.

However, the abundance of decoration inside the Badi Palace, with its arrangement of courtyards and generous side rooms, was just gorgeous. We were lucky enough to find a mosaic worker producing some new pieces for some refurbishment work. With deft chipping he transformed a square tile into a star, and then gave it to us. Up until then we'd imagined that all the massive number of tiles had been somehow moulded. Obviously not. The variety of shapes were meticulously hammered out by artisans, no doubt with the skills carried down through the generations.

Badi Palace. Painted ceiling

All hand-made.

The artisan who made a star tile for us.

Plaster carved to a depth of over 1cm.

The Bahia Palace was a totally different story altogether. This was not so much a building as a huge garden, complete with massive pools (now empty) and the remains of a number of pavilions. Though the king did live in one part of the complex at certain times, the palace was principally designed to showcase his wealth and provide a place to entertain ambassadors and other visitors. The idea was to inspire a sense of awe and wonder, and that certainly must have been the case given the size and scale of the place, all enclosed within extremely high mud walls. Unfortunately the next king wanted to move his capital to Meknes, so stripped much of the best materials to take there.

Bahia Palace. The large hollows were once covered in mosaics and filled with water.

One interesting thing was the minbar (pulpit) from the main Marrakech mosque, Koutoubia. It was made back in the 16th century, but had absolutely superb quality woodwork.

The temperature was climbing higher and higher during the day, in fact it had reached the early 30s both yesterday and today. We opted to continue the short distance to the Saadian Tombs, where a fair number of early Moroccans are buried beneath very attractive mosaic-work in a quiet and walled-off area near one of the mosques. At each of the three places we visited today the entrance fee was only 10Dhm (about 1Euro). It's really refreshing knowing that the local authorities have decided not to gouge tourists with super-high prices, which they so often do in other countries. To us, a 2-tier approach where tourists pay a reasonable amount more than the locals (e.g. at the Jardins Majorelle) seems totally fair.

Saadian Tombs. Plenty of bodies buried until the tiles on the floor.

We planned to head back to the little family-run restaurant we have enjoyed so much to date, to try out their last Moroccan specialties, but unfortunately they were closed. It being Friday, a number of shops and restaurants were. We ended up where we had eaten on our first night, with yet another tajine.