A Life in Ruins – Volubilis, Morocco

At the entrance to the site we paid the reasonable entry fee and then negotiated with a local guide who offered to give us a guided tour and a history of the city and when we were all satisfied with the price we set off along a dusty path towards the excavations and Hamid began his commentary

Volubilis was the Roman capital of the Province of Mauritania and was founded in the third century B.C., it became an important outpost of the Roman Empire and was graced with many fine buildings.  Extensive remains of these survive in the archaeological site, located in the middle of this fertile agricultural area.  The city continued to be occupied long after the Romans had gone and at some point converted to Islam and Volubilis was later briefly to become the capital of Idris I, founder of the Idrisid dynasty, who is buried at nearby Moulay Idris.   It is now of course a UNESCO World Heritage Site, admitted to the list in 1997.

Volubilis was an important and versatile place, a garrison town which protected the far south western boundary of the Empire, an agricultural bread basket producing important crops like wheat and olives in the fertile valley to be transported across the Empire via Tangier to the North on the Mediterranean Sea and a city of rich noblemen who built themselves fine villas and a beautiful city in an enviable location.  Much better I imagine to be posted here than to the northern extremes of the Empire at Hadrian’s Wall.

Volubilis, it turns out, is the most important ancient archeological site in Morocco and Hassan took us into the old streets running north to south and through the foundations and walls of the houses that flanked them.  In many of them there were fine mosaics and I thought it a little surprising to find them here exposed to the elements and not having been removed to a museum nearby.  The houses were huge and with a bit of imagination it was almost possible to imagine what this place may have been like two thousand years ago.  It was interesting to walk around the old streets, wander through the corridors of the houses, along the main street of shops and imagine that in this very place there were soldiers marching, old Latin plays being performed in the theater, emperor worshippers in the temples, magistrates swaggering around importantly in togas, and slaves to do all of the dirty work.

 

 

After walking along the main street lined by the remains of grand columns and arches we arrived at the centre piece of the city, the triumphal arch which has been carefully pieced back together by French archeologists nearly a hundred years ago.  Next to the arch was the Forum, the centre of political life in the city and adjacent to that the ancient Basilica where the citizens came to worship their gods.

Hamid concluded the tour with an explanation of Roman life in this area and tried to speculate why the Romans suddenly abandoned Morocco but like many historians who have wrestled with this question before him could provide no answers.  He walked us back to the car park where Abdul was waiting and we paid the agreed fee and added a tip to thank him for an excellent tour.

Next we were due to drive to Moulay Idriss which nestled in the folds of the mountain and was gleaming white in the sunshine.  Abdul took us along a high level road so that we could get some pictures but we were unsure about this because the heavy rain last night had turned the road to mud and the sides of the mountain had been washed down over the asphalt.  It didn’t seem safe especially when he parked on a precipitous ledge and invited us out to get our photographs.

The problem with stopping we discovered was that it was inevitable that someone would quickly appear trying to sell us something. Uusually this was necklaces and jewellery but sometimes fossils, that were almost certainly fakes, and fascinating round chunks of coal with iron Pyrite crystals which they claimed were completely natural and collected from the mountains but in reality are manufactured in a workshop using a simple crystal solution.  Abdul kept an eye on things and although he allowed them to approach us he stepped in if their sales technique became too robust.

We were glad to leave the precarious hillside and back in the vehicle Abdul drove us into the city which has only one main road running through it and a web of alleyways disappearing into the maze behind it.  Today was flea market day and the road was crammed with people picking over the merchandise on the stalls including a lot of second hand clothing which looked as though it had found its way here via the weekly recycling collections back in the UK.  Abdul nosed his way through the crowds of people who were not especially inclined to give way and clearly thought they had priority to be there.

We didn’t stop in Moulay Idriss and although no one explained why I believe it is because non Muslims are not especially welcome in this pilgrimage city and certainly we saw no European travellers or tourists as we inched our way along the street and out the other side.  I sensed that even Abdul wasn’t too comfortable to be there with a car full of camera pointing Christian infidels and once through the crowds he quickly returned to the main road and pointed the taxi in the direction of Meknes to the south.

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Related Articles:

Spartacus the Gladiator

Rome

The Roman City of Pompeii

The Roman City of Herculaneum

The Roman Amphitheatre at Pula

The Aqueduct of Segovia

The Roman Buildings at Mérida

The Roman Ruins at Segóbriga

Diocletian’s Palace at Split

The Roman Buildings at Arles

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Morocco, Volubilis and Moulay Idriss

At the entrance to the site we paid the reasonable entry fee and then negotiated with a local guide who offered to give us a guided tour and a history of the city and when we were all satisfied with the price we set off along a dusty path towards the excavations and Hamid began his commentary

Volubilis was the Roman capital of the Province of Mauritania and was founded in the third century B.C., it became an important outpost of the Roman Empire and was graced with many fine buildings.  Extensive remains of these survive in the archaeological site, located in the middle of this fertile agricultural area.  The city continued to be occupied long after the Romans had gone and at some point converted to Islam and Volubilis was later briefly to become the capital of Idris I, founder of the Idrisid dynasty, who is buried at nearby Moulay Idris.   It is now of course a UNESCO World Heritage Site, admitted to the list in 1997.

Volubilis was an important and versatile place, a garrison town which protected the far south western boundary of the Empire, an agricultural bread basket producing important crops like wheat and olives in the fertile valley to be transported across the Empire via Tangier to the North on the Mediterranean Sea and a city of rich noblemen who built themselves fine villas and a beautiful city in an enviable location.  Much better I imagine to be posted here than to the northern extremes of the Empire at Hadrian’s Wall.

Volubilis, it turns out, is the most important ancient archeological site in Morocco and Hassan took us into the old streets running north to south and through the foundations and walls of the houses that flanked them.  In many of them there were fine mosaics and I thought it a little surprising to find them here exposed to the elements and not having been removed to a museum nearby.  The houses were huge and with a bit of imagination it was almost possible to imagine what this place may have been like two thousand years ago.  It was interesting to walk around the old streets, wander through the corridors of the houses, along the main street of shops and imagine that in this very place there were soldiers marching, old Latin plays being performed in the theater, emperor worshippers in the temples, magistrates swaggering around importantly in togas, and slaves to do all of the dirty work.

 

 

After walking along the main street lined by the remains of grand columns and arches we arrived at the centre piece of the city, the triumphal arch which has been carefully pieced back together by French archeologists nearly a hundred years ago.  Next to the arch was the Forum, the centre of political life in the city and adjacent to that the ancient Basilica where the citizens came to worship their gods.

Hamid concluded the tour with an explanation of Roman life in this area and tried to speculate why the Romans suddenly abandoned Morocco but like many historians who have wrestled with this question before him could provide no answers.  He walked us back to the car park where Abdul was waiting and we paid the agreed fee and added a tip to thank him for an excellent tour.

Next we were due to drive to Moulay Idriss which nestled in the folds of the mountain and was gleaming white in the sunshine.  Abdul took us along a high level road so that we could get some pictures but we were unsure about this because the heavy rain last night had turned the road to mud and the sides of the mountain had been washed down over the asphalt.  It didn’t seem safe especially when he parked on a precipitous ledge and invited us out to get our photographs.

The problem with stopping we discovered was that it was inevitable that someone would quickly appear trying to sell us something. Uusually this was necklaces and jewellery but sometimes fossils, that were almost certainly fakes, and fascinating round chunks of coal with iron Pyrite crystals which they claimed were completely natural and collected from the mountains but in reality are manufactured in a workshop using a simple crystal solution.  Abdul kept an eye on things and although he allowed them to approach us he stepped in if their sales technique became too robust.

We were glad to leave the precarious hillside and back in the vehicle Abdul drove us into the city which has only one main road running through it and a web of alleyways disappearing into the maze behind it.  Today was flea market day and the road was crammed with people picking over the merchandise on the stalls including a lot of second hand clothing which looked as though it had found its way here via the weekly recycling collections back in the UK.  Abdul nosed his way through the crowds of people who were not especially inclined to give way and clearly thought they had priority to be there.

We didn’t stop in Moulay Idriss and although no one explained why I believe it is because non Muslims are not especially welcome in this pilgrimage city and certainly we saw no European travellers or tourists as we inched our way along the street and out the other side.  I sensed that even Abdul wasn’t too comfortable to be there with a car full of camera pointing Christian infidels and once through the crowds he quickly returned to the main road and pointed the taxi in the direction of Meknes to the south.

____________________________________

Related Articles:

Spartacus the Gladiator

Rome

The Roman City of Pompeii

The Roman City of Herculaneum

The Roman Amphitheatre at Pula

The Aqueduct of Segovia

The Roman Buildings at Mérida

The Roman Ruins at Segóbriga

Diocletian’s Palace at Split

The Roman Buildings at Arles

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Morocco, Three Cities and a Day of Sightseeing

Considering the amount of rain that had fallen the previous evening and all through the night I wasn’t terribly optimistic when I woke next morning and went to check the weather as a basis for some important decision making about the day ahead but unexpectedly there had been a complete transformation and the sky was big and blue and the sun was shining again as I surveyed the view from the sun terrace at the top of the Riad.

I was glad about that and flushed with relief reported the good news to the others because we had arranged a trip out of Fez today which would take us to the Roman city of Volubilis, the Muslim Holy City of Moulay Idriss and the Royal City of Meknes.  Abdul was due to collect us at ten o’clock so with the weather looking good there was no need for any hasty rearrangements to the itinerary.  We were all up early so we had a leisurely breakfast and took our time over the excellent food before he arrived a few minutes ahead of schedule.

We left the city by the same gate as the previous day and headed west on the main highway towards Rabat competing for tarmac space with trucks, cars and donkeys and curious three wheeled pick-up trucks which wobbled dangerously about and hogged the middle of the road making it difficult to pass.  I suspect they didn’t do this to be difficult but out of necessity because they didn’t look terribly stable and quite unsuitable for driving too close to the verges on both sides of the road.   Soon we were leaving the urban area behind as we passed through suburbs and villages separated by plots of useless scrub land but then we took a turning north and soon entered the countryside.

The fields here were surprisingly green and fertile and we passed through olive groves being tended by men living in makeshift tents at the side of the road and then the alarmingly inconsistent road surface took us deep into the agricultural farmland where the colours of russet, cream and gold reminded me of the plains of La Mancha.  We passed shepherds tending their sheep and men on the high sides of the hills ploughing with donkeys but this traditional way of life appeared somewhat peripheral as the main fields in the lush valley had all the signs of modern commercial agriculture even though some of the tractors looked as though they really belonged in a museum.

Eventually the road started to twist and turn and we started to climb into the mountains of Zerhoun which reared up to our left overlooking the flat valley to our right and after forty kilometres or so we came in sight of a blue lake shimmering in the sunlight and reflecting the shadows of the clouds as they swept across the sky.  This was the Nzala el Oudaïa  and there was a perfect viewing place and Abdul stopped the taxi in a lay-by next to a handful of fruit stalls with owners selling local produce who seemed surprisingly uninterested in doing any business with us.

After a short break we carried on and the road continued to twist and turn as we passed shabby run-down roadside houses each with a recent harvest of olives outside the front door and then through the untidy town of Ouled Youssef which looked an unfriendly and unwelcoming sort of place where the quality of highway engineering came to a sudden and dramatic stop and we were glad that Abdul didn’t stop there.

I was completely disorientated now as the road threaded its way through the mountain passes heading in different directions with every hairpin bend.  The reason for this was that we were circumnavigating the mountain and eventually we reached the northern slopes and the road turned south and straightened with the mountain now to our left and the agricultural farm land to our right and to the west.

As we drove cloud began to increase, above us was a flotilla of white sails skipping across the sky as though taking part in a regatta but in the distance to the south there was a fleet of steel grey battleships and we were driving straight towards them and none of us had thought to bring our umbrellas.

Eventually we saw signs for the excavations of Volubilis and Abdul left the highway and followed a track towards the Roman City.  I’m not sure what I was really expecting but this took me by surprise rather like the moment we came across the Roman ruins of Segobriga in Spain in 2009 for even from the road it was clear that this place was much bigger than I was expecting. Luckily we hadn’t driven quite into the clouds so the weather remained perfect and the sky a reassuring blue and with the sun dodging between the clouds it was blissfully warm when we climbed out of the taxi to visit the ruins and the excavations.