Imperial Cities Romance

The Jardin Majorelle is most itself in the first hour before the crowds — a botanical garden of impossible color that Yves Saint Laurent loved so completely he asked to be buried there. The souks afterward reward those who have already seen the city, because now you know what you want: the textile sellers in their quarter, the spice mountains, the perfume distillers who will blend something specifically for you. The second day in Marrakech always reveals what the first couldn't — the depth beneath the surface.

The transition from Marrakech to Fes carries you forward through the mountains and backward through history — into the world's largest functioning medieval city. Fes el-Bali is a UNESCO site that UNESCO hasn't been able to modernize: the lanes are too narrow for vehicles, and everything still moves on foot and donkeyback as it has for a thousand years. The tannery viewpoint is the one photograph everyone recognizes; being there in person is something entirely different.

A full day in Fes rewards the time investment: the morning in Medersa Bou Inania, where the tilework and carved plaster achieve a perfection that is genuinely affecting, and the afternoon in the Mellah where the history of coexistence is written in the architecture. The souks of Fes are less touristic than Marrakech — the artisans here work for the domestic market and are less interested in selling you something than in making it.

Meknes was the imperial city that tried to be Versailles — the enormous Bab Mansour gate is larger than it needs to be, the granaries larger than any army required, and the royal stables held 12,000 horses because a sultan could. The Roman ruins of Volubilis nearby are the reason Morocco has a classical layer beneath the Islamic one: mosaics still intact in their courtyards, triumphal arches still standing, olive presses sitting where they were abandoned fourteen centuries ago.

The drive into the Rif Mountains takes longer than maps suggest — the switchbacks require patience and reward it with the sight of Chefchaouen appearing in the valley below, impossibly blue against the grey rock and the cedar forest. The medina has been blue since the Jewish refugees of 1492 painted it that way, and it's been photogenic ever since — but the color is so genuine and so pervasive that no photograph quite captures the experience of walking inside it.

The journey south or west closes the imperial circuit with a final landscape: the plains of the Gharb giving way to the foothills of the Middle Atlas, the road passing through cities that were capitals before the current capitals existed. The shape of Morocco is clearer now than when you arrived — a country of layers, not a single story, and all of them fascinating.