Is Morocco good for history lovers?

For a history lover Morocco is a feast, because almost nowhere else stacks so many eras so vividly and so close together. In a single trip you can stand among Roman mosaics, lose yourself in a medieval Islamic city that still functions exactly as it did 1,000 years ago, trace Berber dynasties who built empires reaching into Spain, and read the more recent French and Spanish colonial story off the very buildings. I always tell history-minded guests that here the past isn't roped off in a museum — it's the place you eat, sleep and walk.

Start with the imperial cities, because they are the spine of Moroccan history. Fes el-Bali is the showpiece: the world's largest living medieval city, home to the Bou Inania and Al-Attarine medersas with their breathtaking Marinid carving and zellige, and the Qarawiyyin, founded in 859 and often called the oldest continuously operating university on earth. Marrakech gives you the Almoravid and Almohad and Saadian story — the Koutoubia minaret, the exquisite Saadian Tombs hidden and rediscovered, the ruined grandeur of the Badi Palace, and the 16th-century Ben Youssef Medersa. Meknes adds Moulay Ismail's monumental 17th-century gates and granaries, and Rabat the Almohad Hassan Tower and the Chellah, a Roman-then-Merinid necropolis grown over with storks and figs.

Then go deeper in time. Volubilis, near Meknes, is the best-preserved Roman city in Morocco — triumphal arch, basilica, and floor mosaics of Orpheus and the Labours of Hercules still in situ under the open sky. Lixus near Larache and the ruins at Sala and Banasa carry the Phoenician and Roman thread further. The southern oasis routes give you the great earthen kasbahs — Aït Benhaddou, Telouet, Skoura's Kasbah Amridil — the architecture of the caravan trade and the Glaoui pashas.

What makes it special, though, is the continuity. The tanneries of Fes are worked the medieval way; the call to prayer over a 12th-century minaret is a living act, not a re-enactment; a family riad may be a restored Saadian-era house. To get the most from it, travel with a good licensed local historian-guide in each city, who turns a beautiful wall into a dated, named story. Pair Volubilis with Fes and Meknes, devote real time to Marrakech's monuments, and add the kasbah road south, and you have one of the richest history trips anywhere in the world.