El Badi Palace

El Badi Palace — "the Incomparable" — was built in the late 16th century by the Saadian sultan Ahmad al-Mansur as a monument to his power and wealth, reportedly funded in part by a ransom paid after a major military victory. In its day it was said to rival any palace in the Islamic world, faced with imported marble, gold, and onyx, and built around an enormous courtyard with a central pool and sunken gardens.

Little of that opulence survives. Roughly a century after its completion, the Alaouite sultan Moulay Ismail systematically stripped the palace of its valuable materials to furnish his new capital at Meknes, leaving the great pisé (rammed-earth) walls and the bones of the layout exposed to the sky. What remains today is a vast, roofless enclosure — impressive precisely because of its scale and emptiness.

Visitors walk among the sunken orange gardens, around the long central basin, and through underground passages and storerooms. A celebrated minbar (pulpit) from the Koutoubia Mosque has been displayed here in a dedicated room. From the upper terraces, white storks nest atop the ramparts and the views stretch across to the Atlas Mountains on clear days.

El Badi offers a different mood from Marrakech's polished palaces: raw, open, and evocative, it invites imagination of former splendour rather than presenting intact decoration.

Ahmad al-Mansur began El Badi around 1578, shortly after the Battle of the Three Kings, using the prestige and resources of that victory to fund an extraordinary building campaign. The palace was conceived for receptions and ceremony, designed to overwhelm visiting dignitaries with its materials and scale. Contemporary accounts describe marble from Italy, gold, and precious stone lavished across its halls.

The Saadian dynasty declined in the 17th century, and with the rise of the Alaouites, Moulay Ismail set about dismantling Saadian monuments. Over a period of years his workers carried off El Badi's marble, doors, and fittings to Meknes, reducing the "Incomparable" palace to its earthen shell.

What endures are the massive rammed-earth walls, the footprint of the courtyards and pavilions, the central pool, and a network of below-ground chambers. The site also preserves and displays the original Almohad-era minbar of the Koutoubia Mosque, a masterpiece of medieval woodwork moved here for conservation.

Now an open-air heritage site, El Badi hosts cultural events and offers some of the best elevated views in the kasbah quarter, its ramparts colonised each year by nesting storks.