Volubilis is the largest and best-preserved Roman site in Morocco, and one of the most fascinating trips in the country. In rolling countryside of olive groves and wheat fields, at the foot of Mount Zerhoun, lie the ruins of a city that almost two thousand years ago was a thriving provincial capital at the African edge of the Roman Empire. There are temples, triumphal arches, baths, grand houses and, above all, floor mosaics of extraordinary quality, kept in the open air on the very spot where the ancient inhabitants walked on them.
Listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Volubilis surprises anyone who doesn't expect to find such an important piece of the Roman world in Morocco. Cultures met here: it was an Amazigh (Berber) city that became Romanised, the capital of the kingdom of Mauretania and later of the province of Mauretania Tingitana, with a mixed population of Berbers, Romans, Greeks, Jews and Syrians. After the fall of Rome it stayed inhabited for centuries, and very close by, in Moulay Idriss, Morocco's first Muslim dynasty was born. It even used the stones of Volubilis to build its cities.
This guide covers the essentials of Volubilis from a practical angle: what to see (the main monuments and the must-see mosaics), how much it costs and how to get there from Meknes or Fez, how to combine it with the holy town of Moulay Idriss, and key tips for enjoying it: bring cash (there are no ATMs and cards aren't reliable), go early or at sunset to avoid the heat and the lack of shade, and decide whether to hire a guide. It's a trip into Roman Morocco, often overshadowed by the medinas and the desert, but truly unforgettable.
Volubilis began as an Amazigh (Berber) and Punic settlement, and in the 3rd century BC it was one of the capitals of the kingdom of Mauretania, a Berber state allied with Rome and later dependent on it. Under King Juba II and his son Ptolemy it became very prosperous. In AD 40 Rome annexed the kingdom and Volubilis joined the Empire as one of the main cities of the province of Mauretania Tingitana. Its golden age came between the 1st and 3rd centuries, thanks to the trade in olive oil and grain. The city was granted the status of municipium and filled up with monuments: a forum, a capitol, a basilica, a triumphal arch, baths and luxurious houses with mosaics. Rome withdrew from the area around 285, but Berber, Christian and Jewish communities went on living in Volubilis for centuries. At the end of the 8th century, Idris I settled in the region and founded the Idrisid dynasty nearby. An earthquake in the 18th century and the stripping of its stones (Moulay Ismail took them to Meknes) left it in ruins. 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, 51 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.
Long before the Romans arrived, a town was already thriving on the hill where the ruins of Volubilis spread out today. The settlement goes back at least to the 3rd century BC, when an Amazigh (Berber) community lived here and traded with the Carthaginians. Inscriptions in Punic and Libyco-Berber found on the site date from that early period. The town was called Walili, a Berber name for the oleander, a plant that grows all over the area. Its Latin name, Volubilis, comes from it, and so does its Arabic name today, Walili.
Volubilis grew in importance until it became one of the main cities, and one of the capitals, of the kingdom of Mauretania. This Berber state covered north-west Africa and had close ties with Rome. It was Rome's ally and, more and more, under its control. The independent kingdom reached its peak under King Juba II, a learned and very Romanised ruler. He was educated in Rome and married Cleopatra Selene, the daughter of Cleopatra of Egypt and Mark Antony. Juba II and his son Ptolemy made their kingdom a prosperous ally of Rome. Volubilis, one of their residences, grew rich and began to take up the Roman way of life.
That period ended suddenly. In AD 40, Emperor Caligula had King Ptolemy of Mauretania murdered. Rome then annexed the kingdom outright and split it into two imperial provinces.
After the annexation, Volubilis became part of the Roman Empire as one of the main cities of the new province of Mauretania Tingitana, whose capital was Tingis (today's Tangier). The city had sided with Rome during the Berber revolt that followed the annexation. As a reward it was made a municipium and its people became Roman citizens. This was the start of its real golden age, which lasted through the 1st, 2nd and 3rd centuries AD.
Volubilis grew to around 20,000 inhabitants and gained all the monuments of a Roman provincial city. It had a forum and a Capitoline temple to the triad of Jupiter, Juno and Minerva. It also had a large basilica for courts and business, public baths, aqueducts and fountains, and walls with monumental gates. Above all, it had luxurious mansions decorated with the superb mosaics that are its greatest treasure today. In 217 the city built the Arch of Caracalla to thank the emperor for giving its people citizenship and tax benefits.
Volubilis owed its wealth to the fertile farmland around it. The city produced and exported large amounts of olive oil and wheat, and the many oil presses still standing among the ruins show how big that trade was. Its society was mixed and cosmopolitan. Romanised Berbers, settlers from Italy, Greek and Syrian merchants and a Jewish community all lived side by side, under Roman order and culture, at the far western edge of the Empire.
Around AD 285, the Empire was in crisis and the Berber tribes of the interior were pressing on its borders. Rome then made an unusual decision. It withdrew its troops and its administration from Volubilis and the south of Mauretania Tingitana, and pulled the frontier back north to the area around Tangier and Ceuta. Many other Roman cities were abandoned after the fall of the Empire, but Volubilis was not. People kept living there for centuries without a break. First came a Romanised, Christianised population. After them came Berber, Christian and Jewish communities, who kept the city alive with no Roman rule at all.
Latin and Christian inscriptions from the centuries after the Roman withdrawal, along with archaeological finds, show this remarkable continuity. The city stayed urban, with a mixed population, through late antiquity and the early Middle Ages. That is rare in the western part of the old Empire.
The big turning point came at the end of the 8th century, when Islam reached the Maghreb. Around 788, Idris ibn Abdallah (Idris I) took refuge in this region. He was a sharif, a descendant of the Prophet, who had fled persecution in the East, and the local Berber tribes took him in. He settled right next to Volubilis, which was still inhabited at the time and known as Walili. From here he founded the Idrisid dynasty, the first Muslim dynasty of Morocco. The holy town of Moulay Idriss Zerhoun grew up around his tomb, very close to the site. Not long after, his son Idris II founded the city of Fez.
New Islamic cities rose in the region, above all Fez, founded by the Idrisids in the early 9th century, and later Meknes. As they grew, old Volubilis lost importance and people. Life shifted to these new centres, and the ancient city became more and more of a backwater, although some people still lived there during the Middle Ages.
Two things finished it off. The first was nature. The region is prone to earthquakes, and an earthquake is thought to have brought down many of the buildings still standing. Tradition links it to the great Lisbon earthquake of 1755, which was felt across north-west Africa. The second was plunder. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the Alaouite sultan Moulay Ismail was building his lavish imperial capital in nearby Meknes. He had huge amounts of stone, marble and columns hauled away from Volubilis for his palaces and gates. In fact, much of the marble in Meknes' monumental Bab Mansour gate comes from the Roman ruins. For generations, Volubilis served as a quarry for buildings in the area.
And so a once-prosperous Roman provincial capital ended up as a field of half-buried ruins among the olive groves, almost forgotten. Then, in the 19th and 20th centuries, archaeologists turned their attention to it again.
The scientific rediscovery of Volubilis began in the 19th century. It picked up pace under the French protectorate in the first half of the 20th century, with major excavation campaigns. These uncovered the layout of the city and its monuments and, above all, the extraordinary mosaics that made it famous. Some columns were put back up, and the Arch of Caracalla and the Capitol were partly rebuilt. Very valuable pieces were also recovered, such as the famous bronze busts, among them the so-called 'Juba II' and the 'dog of Volubilis'. They are now kept in the Rabat Archaeological Museum.
Excavations have carried on to this day. They have confirmed how rich the Roman city was, and also how it kept going after Rome withdrew, one of the things that make Volubilis unique. In 1997, UNESCO declared the archaeological site of Volubilis a World Heritage Site. It recognised it as an exceptionally well-preserved example of a large Roman colonial city on the edge of the Empire. It also recognised it as evidence of the many civilisations that left their mark on the same spot: Berber, Carthaginian, Roman, Christian and Islamic.
Today, Volubilis is the most visited archaeological site in Morocco and a must-do day trip from Meknes or Fez. You can walk its paved streets and see mosaics that are almost two thousand years old in the open air. You can watch the Arch of Caracalla stand out against the olive groves, with the white town of Moulay Idriss in the background. It all adds up to a one-of-a-kind trip through two thousand years of Mediterranean history, at the spot where the Roman world and Islamic Morocco meet.
