Believe it or not, this beautiful courtyard house was our riad in Marrakech. A really superb example of Moroccan interior design.
The streets were another matter. Moroccan driving (and road crossing) was a tourist attraction itself, as long as you were experiencing it from the sidelines! Crossing the road really did leave you wondering if you would make it to the other side in one piece... No still picture can really grasp the balletic precision with which cars, motorbikes, cycles, horse-drawn carts and pedestrians all managed to just miss each other, sometimes with inches to spare.
The Koutoubia Mosque was a beautiful thing, just next to our riad. The tower is actually exactly the same as the one in Seville, giving an insight into the one-time size of the Moroccan empire.
We then visited the Museum of Marrakech:
And the Medersa Ben Youssef, one of the early arabic 'universities', claiming the honour of the oldest university in the world, predating Cambridge by at least a century.
The student rooms were kind of small, seeing as there were only 50 or so rooms, holding up to 800 students at a time!
The Saadian Tombs, resting place for the great sultans and princes (and occasional tortoise):
And the Palace El Badi, only a ruin now but one time one of the greatest palaces in the world:
Even the fountains and pools had incredibly complex plumbing systems, now laid open to the elements by the collapse of the floor above:
3 comments:
The riad you stayed in looks so enchanting. I love a house with a courtyard and one as beautiful as this must be inspiring.
It was probably the prettiest courtyard of the three we went to. Two Moroccan brothers renovated the riad themselves - one of them had been in the States for 20 years. Most riads are owned by non-Moroccans now. The first one (in Fez) was amazing though, we had the roof terrace to ourselves for a few days.
This is gorgeous! Love the tile.
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