Meknes is Morocco's most underrated imperial city, often overshadowed by its neighbour and rival Fez, just half an hour away by train. Yet this city of colossal walls and monumental gates has a fascinating history and a first-class heritage. It was the capital that the great Sultan Muley Ismail, a contemporary, admirer (and rival) of Louis XIV of France, built in the 17th century with boundless ambition: he wanted a Moroccan Versailles, ringed by dozens of kilometres of walls, with palaces, gardens, stables for thousands of horses and gigantic granaries.
The symbol of that grandeur is Bab Mansour, perhaps the most beautiful monumental gate in all of North Africa, which opens onto the huge El Hedim square. Around it you'll find the Mausoleum of Muley Ismail himself (one of the few religious buildings non-Muslims can visit), the impressive royal granaries and stables of Heri es-Souani, the Agdal basin, and a World Heritage medina that is lively, authentic and far less touristy and hectic than the one in Fez.
This guide covers the essentials of Meknes with a practical eye: what to see and what it costs, how to get between its somewhat scattered monuments, and how to use it as a base for two must-do trips close by: the Roman ruins of Volubilis, the best preserved in the country, and the holy town of Muley Idriss Zerhoun. As in any Moroccan city, haggle in the souk and be wary of fake guides, although Meknes is noticeably calmer and friendlier to travellers than the country's big tourist medinas.
Meknes was founded in the 11th century by the Almoravids as a military stronghold, and it takes its name from the Meknasa, the Berber tribe that lived in the area. For centuries it was a secondary city in the shadow of nearby Fez, until its moment of glory came in the 17th century: the Alaouite sultan Muley Ismail (who reigned from 1672 to 1727) chose it as the capital of his empire and turned it into a lavish imperial city. He put tens of thousands of workers and captives to work building more than 40 km of walls, palaces, mosques, gardens, and a vast complex of granaries and stables for his army and his famous Black Guard. Muley Ismail, a ruler as powerful as he was feared for his cruelty, was a contemporary of Louis XIV, and kept up diplomatic relations with his court. After his death the capital moved back to Fez and Meknes declined, but it kept its formidable heritage, now a Unesco World Heritage Site. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The axis of Moroccan power: Casablanca, the economic metropolis of the colonial era; Rabat, the quiet capital on the Atlantic; Meknes, the Versailles of Moulay Ismail; Fez, the spiritual capital and its thousand-year-old medina; and Volubilis, the Roman city among the olive groves.
Read the history of Casablanca and the imperial cities (Fez, Meknes, Rabat) →They depart from Fez, 52 km away. If you book from this link we earn a commission and you pay no more.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
The name Meknes comes from a Berber tribe, the Meknasa (Miknasa), who settled in this fertile region of northern Morocco from the 8th century onwards, in the early days of the Islamisation of the Maghreb. For centuries, several farming villages were scattered across the plain here, making the most of a rich land of cereals and olives watered by the rivers flowing down from the Middle Atlas.
The city itself began to take shape in the 11th century, when the Berber Almoravid dynasty, which unified Morocco and al-Andalus, set up a military stronghold here. From then on, Meknes grew as an urban centre, though always in the shadow of its powerful and illustrious neighbour, Fez, the great religious, cultural and political centre of the region. Under the dynasties that followed — the Almohads in the 12th century, the Marinids in the 13th and 14th centuries — Meknes was a second-rank city, but one of some importance, with walls, mosques and, in Marinid times, beautiful madrasas such as the Bou Inania, which still survives.
Nothing suggested that this modest city would become, for a few decades, the capital of an entire empire and one of the most monumental cities in Africa. That extraordinary leap has a name: Muley Ismail.
The great chapter in the history of Meknes coincides with the reign of one of the most powerful and longest-ruling sultans in Moroccan history: Muley Ismail (Moulay Ismail), of the Alaouite dynasty, who ruled from 1672 to 1727 — no less than 55 years. When he came to the throne, Morocco was a fragmented and restless country; Muley Ismail unified it with an iron fist, subdued the rebel tribes, drove the Europeans out of several coastal strongholds and built a highly centralised state.
One of his first acts was to choose Meknes as the capital of his empire, instead of Fez or Marrakech. And from there he unleashed an unprecedented building frenzy. For decades, tens of thousands of workers, slaves and captives — many of them European Christians seized by corsairs and held in brutal conditions — raised a colossal imperial city: more than 40 kilometres of walls and bastions, endless palaces, mosques, gardens, monumental gates, a huge complex of granaries and stables (the Heri es-Souani) able to hold supplies for years and thousands of horses, and a great reservoir, the Agdal, to supply water to the whole complex. Meknes became a vast stage for the sultan's absolute power.
To sustain his state, Muley Ismail created a professional and feared army: the Black Guard, or Abid al-Bukhari, a corps of tens of thousands of soldiers of sub-Saharan origin, loyal only to the sultan, which was one of the keys to his power. With that army he kept order throughout the country and projected Morocco's strength.
Muley Ismail's building ambition and the splendour of his court have earned Meknes the name 'the Moroccan Versailles', and the comparison is no accident: the sultan was an exact contemporary of Louis XIV of France, the Sun King, who was building the Palace of Versailles in those very same years, and the two monarchs maintained diplomatic relations. Muley Ismail sent embassies to the French court and even — according to tradition — asked for the hand of one of Louis XIV's daughters, the Princess of Conti, in an episode as famous as it is probably exaggerated by the chronicles. The rivalry and mutual fascination between the two courts are part of the legend of Meknes.
But Muley Ismail also had a dark and terrible side. He was a ruler of legendary cruelty who governed through terror: European chronicles of the time, many written by captives who managed to return home, describe him executing slaves and subjects with his own hands for the slightest reason, and the works on his imperial city cost countless lives. According to the sources, he had hundreds of wives and concubines and an enormous number of descendants. His reign was a mix of grandeur, order, brutality and megalomania that left an indelible mark.
The monument that best sums up his power is the Bab Mansour gate, completed under his son, covered in tiles and supported by marble columns taken from the Roman ruins of Volubilis, the nearby ancient city that Muley Ismail plundered to embellish his capital. His tomb, in the Mausoleum that bears his name, is still a revered place today, one of the few shrines in Morocco open to non-Muslims.
The splendour of Meknes was as intense as it was short-lived, and closely tied to the life of its creator. After Muley Ismail's death in 1727, the empire sank into succession struggles among his many sons, and his successors did not keep the capital in Meknes: power soon returned to Fez and Marrakech. The imperial city, barely finished, began to fall out of use and deteriorate.
Nature dealt the final blow. The great Lisbon earthquake of 1755, which devastated much of the Atlantic seaboard, also caused serious damage in Meknes and its grand palaces, many of which were left in ruins. From then on, Meknes entered a long decline and became a provincial city once more — important as an agricultural market for its rich region, but far from the imperial rank it had held under Muley Ismail. Many of its monuments were abandoned or put to other uses.
With the French protectorate, established in 1912, Meknes regained some importance: the French turned it into a military base and a leading agricultural and wine-producing centre, taking advantage of the fertile plain, and built a new European-style town next to the medina, the Hamria, on the other side of the river. The Meknes region became one of Morocco's main wine-producing areas, an activity that continues today.
After Moroccan independence in 1956, Meknes gradually rediscovered the value of its extraordinary legacy. In 1996, UNESCO declared the historic city of Meknes a World Heritage Site, recognising it as an exceptional example of a 17th-century fortified capital city of the Maghreb, harmoniously combining elements of the Islamic and European architecture and urban planning of the time. That recognition spurred the restoration of its great monuments — the Bab Mansour, the Mausoleum of Muley Ismail, the Heri es-Souani granaries, the madrasas — and the revival of its medina.
Today, Meknes is a city of more than half a million people, the agricultural and wine capital of its region and one of the country's four imperial cities, though it still gets far fewer tourists than Fez, Marrakech or even Rabat. That relative calm is precisely one of its charms: you can explore its medina and imperial city without the crowds or the pushy sales tactics of the big destinations.
Meknes is also the perfect base for two of the most important sites in central Morocco: the Roman ruins of Volubilis, the best preserved in the country, and the holy town of Muley Idriss Zerhoun, cradle of Morocco's first Muslim dynasty. A city of colossal walls and dreamlike gates, witness to the grandeur and cruelty of Muley Ismail, Meknes is one of the great — and still somewhat secret — treasures of Moroccan heritage.
