Rabat is Morocco's serene capital, a city whose quiet elegance surprises anyone arriving from the bustle of Marrakech or Fez. Home to the king and the government, full of embassies, tree-lined avenues, gardens and administrative buildings, it has a polished, cosmopolitan, almost European feel, yet it keeps a rich historic heritage that earned it, together with its modern city, UNESCO World Heritage status. It is one of the country's four imperial cities and, for many, the most pleasant to explore.
Its history can be read in its monuments: the spectacular Kasbah of the Udayas, an Almohad citadel of white and blue houses above the ocean, with its Andalusian Gardens; the unfinished Hassan Tower, sister of the Giralda in Seville, next to the solemn Mausoleum of Mohammed V; the medina, commercial and authentic but never overwhelming; and the evocative Chellah necropolis, where Roman ruins and Marinid tombs merge among gardens inhabited by storks. All of it on the banks of the Bouregreg river, facing the old corsair town of Salé.
This guide covers the essentials of Rabat from a practical angle: what to see and how much it costs (many of its great monuments are free), how to get around by tram and on foot, and how to make the most of its easy train link with Casablanca. Rabat is the Moroccan city where travellers can let their guard down: pushy selling and fake guides are far less common than in other medinas, although, as always in the country, it is worth haggling in the souk and using common sense. An elegant, green capital that tourism often unfairly overlooks.
Rabat has ancient roots: at the mouth of the Bouregreg stood the Roman city of Sala, on whose ruins the Chellah necropolis was later built. In the 12th century, the Almohad sultan Yaqub al-Mansur founded a great ribat here (a fortified military monastery, which gives 'Rabat' its name) from which he planned to launch jihad towards al-Andalus, and began building a colossal mosque whose unfinished minaret is the Hassan Tower. After the sultan's death, the project stalled and the city declined. It revived in the 17th century, when Moriscos expelled from Spain settled here and, together with Salé, founded the famous 'corsair republic of Salé', feared by Atlantic shipping. In 1912, the French protectorate made Rabat the capital of Morocco, a status it kept after independence in 1956. 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) →If you book from here we earn a commission and you pay no more. Prices and availability come from Civitatis.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Rabat's story begins on the banks of the Bouregreg river long before Islam. Where the evocative Chellah necropolis stands today there was once a Phoenician-Punic settlement and, above all, a thriving Roman city: Sala Colonia. It was one of the Empire's southernmost outposts in this part of Africa, the capital of a district in the province of Mauretania Tingitana and a busy trading port on the Atlantic. Among the greenery of Chellah you can still see what remains of that city: the forum, a triumphal arch, columns, baths and paved streets you can walk along.
After Roman power collapsed and the invasions came, Sala slowly declined, although people kept living on the site for centuries. The arrival of Islam in the Maghreb, from the 7th and 8th centuries onwards, completely changed the region. Rabat's real birth as a city, however, would not come until several centuries later, at the hands of one of the great Berber dynasties that ruled Morocco and al-Andalus: the Almohads.
Across the water, on the other bank of the Bouregreg, Salé grew up. For much of the Middle Ages it was more important than Rabat itself and a major trading port.
The name Rabat comes from the Arabic 'ribat', a fortress-monastery where warriors devoted both to prayer and to jihad, holy war, gathered. In the 12th century the Almohad dynasty, which ruled a vast empire on both sides of the Strait, set up a ribat here on the headland above the river mouth. It was the seed of today's Kasbah of the Udayas.
The high point came with Sultan Yaqub al-Mansur ('the Victorious'), who reigned at the end of the 12th century. After his famous victory over the Christian kingdoms at the battle of Alarcos (1195), al-Mansur pictured Rabat as a great imperial capital and a base for his campaigns in al-Andalus, and called it Ribat al-Fath, 'the ribat of victory'. He had it ringed with monumental walls, parts of which still stand, with gates such as the magnificent Bab er-Rouah. He also began a colossal project: a mosque meant to be one of the largest in the Islamic world, with a giant minaret to match the Giralda in Seville and the Koutoubia in Marrakech, its Almohad 'sisters'.
But the dream was cut short. Al-Mansur died in 1199 and work stopped for good. The minaret was left unfinished at 44 metres (today's Hassan Tower), and of the huge prayer hall only the columns went up. Today they form a forest of broken shafts. As the Almohads declined in the 13th century, Rabat lost its importance and for generations was a shrinking, almost empty town in the shadow of neighbouring Salé.
Rabat came back to life unexpectedly in the 17th century, and that revival has Spanish roots. Between 1609 and 1614, King Philip III of Spain ordered the expulsion of the Moriscos, descendants of Andalusi Muslims who had been forcibly converted to Christianity. Thousands of them, driven from their land, crossed the Strait and sought refuge in North Africa. A large group, mostly from the town of Hornachos in Extremadura (the so-called 'Hornacheros') and from other parts of al-Andalus, settled in Rabat and Salé, at the mouth of the Bouregreg.
These Andalusis still spoke Spanish, carried the bitterness of exiles and had real seafaring skill, and they transformed both towns. In Rabat they built a new wall (the 'Andalusian wall' that still marks the edge of the medina) and, above all, they turned the estuary into one of the biggest corsair bases on the Atlantic. So the famous 'Republic of Salé' (or of Bou Regreg) was born: a de facto independent republic, run by the corsairs themselves, which spread terror along the sea routes between the 1620s and the 1660s.
The Salé corsairs, the feared 'Sallee Rovers', attacked European ships, took Christian captives for ransom or slavery, and even raided the coasts of Spain, Portugal, France, England and as far as Ireland and Iceland. It was a legendary and bloody era. It left Rabat and Salé with wealth built on plunder and a population of Andalusi origin that shaped their character for good. The corsair republic was eventually brought to heel by the Alaouite sultans in the mid-17th century, but privateering went on under royal control for a long time.
Over the following centuries, under the Alaouite dynasty, Rabat was one of the royal residences and a town of some standing, but not the capital: the sultans ruled from Fez or Marrakech, the great imperial cities of the interior. The decisive change came with colonisation.
In 1912 the Treaty of Fez set up the French protectorate over Morocco, and the first resident-general, Marshal Hubert Lyautey, made a decision that would change the city's fate: he moved the country's administrative capital from Fez to Rabat. Lyautey wanted a coastal city that was safer, better connected by sea and away from troubled Fez. From then on Rabat was the seat of colonial power and of the sultan, and it was deeply transformed.
Following plans by urban planner Henri Prost, the French carefully left the historic medina untouched and built next to it a 'ville nouvelle' of tree-lined avenues, government buildings, gardens and residential districts, in a style that blended European modernity with Moroccan motifs. Ministries, the residency-general (today the royal palace and official buildings), embassies and large green spaces went up. That is how Rabat gained the elegant, orderly and somewhat stately feel it still has today, very different from the bustle of other Moroccan cities.
When Morocco regained its independence in 1956, Rabat stayed the capital, and it has been ever since. It is home to the king (the Royal Palace, Dar el-Makhzen, is in the city), the government, parliament and every embassy and official body. After the death in 1961 of King Mohammed V, the monarch who negotiated and proclaimed independence, the solemn Mausoleum bearing his name was built here next to the Hassan Tower. Today it also holds the tombs of his sons, among them King Hassan II.
In recent decades Rabat has modernised while taking special care of its heritage and quality of life. It now has a tram network that crosses the river to Salé, it has redeveloped the Bouregreg riverside with a marina, gardens and the spectacular Grand Theatre designed by architect Zaha Hadid, and it has opened cultural institutions such as the Mohammed VI Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, the country's first major modern art museum. In 2012 UNESCO recognised the city's value by inscribing 'Rabat, capital moderna y ciudad histórica: un patrimonio en común' (Rabat, Modern Capital and Historic City: a Shared Heritage) as a World Heritage Site, praising precisely the harmonious coexistence of the Arab-Muslim and Andalusi heritage with 20th-century modern urban planning.
Today Rabat is a calm, green and elegant capital, often overlooked by travellers rushing on to Marrakech or Fez, yet it offers first-rate heritage (the Kasbah of the Udayas, the Hassan Tower, Chellah, the Andalusian medina) in a relaxed, uncrowded setting. It is the city where Morocco's political heart quietly beats, and one of the most pleasant to explore in the whole country.
